


Thnks fr th Mmrs

by crossroadswrite



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alive Claudia Hale - Freeform, Alive Hale Family, Alpha Derek Hale, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Alternate Universe - High School, Angst, BAMF Stiles Stilinski, Babysitter Derek Hale, Babysitter Laura Hale, Banshee Stiles Stilinski, Canon Divergence, College Student Stiles Stilinski, Dad Derek Hale, Dad Stiles Stilinski, Derek Hale Deserves Nice Things, Derek Hale runs an orphanage for the supernatural because reasons, Domestic, Drunk Derek Hale, Emissary Stiles Stilinski, Established Relationship, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Feral Derek Hale, First Dates, Fix It Fic, Flirting, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Full Shift Werewolves, Future Fic, Getting Together, Good Alpha Derek Hale, Good Boyfriend Derek Hale, Growing Up Together, Hurt/Comfort, Jealous Derek Hale, Kid Derek Hale, Kid Fic, Kid Stiles Stilinski, Kittens, Love Confessions, M/M, Mutual Pining, Nerd Derek Hale, Origami, Polish Stiles Stilinski, Popular Stiles Stilinski, Post Season 2 Finale, Post Season 4, Secret Relationship, Shy Derek Hale, Sick Fic, Sick Stiles Stilinski, Stiles' Love for Star Wars, Supportive Derek Hale, There is a doggo in a flower crown which is very important to me, Werewolf Stiles Stilinski, Wolf Derek Hale, bed sharing, flirting with the boy ur dad just arrested isn't ethical stiles, introspective fic, school rivalry, secret admirers, werewolf conventions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-23
Updated: 2016-12-23
Packaged: 2018-09-10 22:51:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 25
Words: 26,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8942731
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crossroadswrite/pseuds/crossroadswrite
Summary: A compilation of my sterek tumblr fic from 2016.[Individual tags in the chapter titles.]





	1. future fic, fluff, they go to watch star wars, first date

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, random wanderer that has stumbled across this amalgamation of trash. You must be wondering what the fuck is this.
> 
> Well, I'm here to explain. See, every year, at the end of the year, I do this little thing where i go through all the fics I wrote and pick the one I liked best from each month, as a sort of summary of my writing through the year. This year I wrote _quite a lot_ on tumblr. Now, since I had to go through those fics too, I thought: why not put all these ficlets on ao3 for the folks that don't go over on my tumblrs, or for people who kind of remember something I wrote and want to re-read it but don't want to go through the trouble of searching through all the not!fic in my writing tag.
> 
> And here we are, my friends. I present to you my accomplishments in the sterek fandom in the year of 2016.
> 
> I need to thank everyone who stuck with me, and gave my shit a chance, and everyone who helped me grow into a better writer than I previously was. It's thanks to y'all that I can keep moving forward and keep writing.
> 
> All of that said, I can't fail to mention that I'm not in the sterek or teen wolf fandom anymore. Sadly, I've moved on from these perfect damaged children, into gayer, more two dimentional pastures, and I can't help but see this bundle of _mess_ as a parting fic from me to tall y'all lovely folks.
> 
> I'm like that one dog that always throws up under the table during Christmas dinner at your auntie's house. So here. Have some regurgitated things I did this year, and I hope this holiday season isn't too rough on you, buddy.
> 
> Happy Holidays.

“… and how very much _dare_ you betray our friendship in such a way, Scott?! I was rooting for you, we were all rooting for you, how _dare_ you!”

“Stiles-“

“You changed man. After all the sacrifices I’ve done for you, after _everything_ and you just go and do something like this to me? You disgust me Scott.”

“Stiles, it’s just a movie.”

Stiles makes a high pitched frustrated noise and actually considers shoving Scott’s face in a bowl of mayo to make him take it back.

He clutches at his chest and curls forwards a little and maybe this way Scott will get how _horrifying_ his words are.

But Scott ever the oblivious puppy just looks at him with mild concern but still wholly unapologetic and Stiles just _can’t_.

He stomps out of the room as loudly and petulantly as he can.

“I can’t even look at you right now!” he yells over his shoulder and slams the door to get his point across.

He power walks his way into the living room and huffily plops down on the couch, crossing his arms and definitely _not_ pouting at the TV.

“Trouble in paradise?” Derek asks, cocking an eyebrow at him from the other side of the couch.

“Scott hasn’t see Star Wars yet. It’s been _years_ , Derek. Why does he hate me, why does he betray me this way? This may be the one thing that breaks our broship.”

“I can’t believe you still say broship.”

“I can’t believe Scott hasn’t seen Star Wars!”

Derek huffs. “Stiles drop it. So what he hasn’t seen it. Not everyone likes Star Wars.”

“ _Heathens_ ,” Stiles hisses, slipping down on the couch and puffing his cheeks. Never mind he’s an _adult_. He’s still totally allowed to be upset under such terrible events.

Derek huffs a little thing that Stiles knows it’s a laugh.

“Laugh it up, Fuzzball.”

Derek raises an eyebrow at him. “Really? You’re insulting me with _Star Wars_.”

Stiles’ mouth drops open a little bit. “You’ve seen Star Wars?”

“Of course I’ve seen Star Wars.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“I find your lack of faith disturbing.”

“Ohmygod,” he whispers in awe and thinks he falls a little bit in love with Derek right then and there. “Marry me.”

“What,” Derek’s eyes widen, flushing slightly high on the tips of his ears which is still the most _unfairly adorable thing ever._

“I said come with me,” he backtracks so fast he almost gives himself whiplash. “To the movie.”

Derek blinks at him for approximately an eternity before he nods a little. “Yeah I’d like that.”

«»

Stiles has chewed through most of his thumb’s fingernail by the time Derek meets him in front of the cinema, wearing a brown leather jacket and a white shirt tucked into his brown pants. He’s also wearing boots.

“Ohmygod. Are you dressed as Han Solo right now?”

Derek ducks his head, looking away as he gruffs out a completely unconvincing, “No.”

“Marry me,” Stiles breathes out, still a little in awe.

“What.”

“You heard me.”

Derek gives him one of the special shy smiles that Stiles has been hoarding for years now. “How about a date first.”

“I can work with a date,” Stiles grins. “This can be it, here hold my hand and let me buy you candy.”

Derek rolls his eyes but holds his hand and lets Stiles buy him candy.

For a first date it goes pretty great. They elbow each other during awesome scenes and admittedly tear up during that _one goddamned_ scene. Derek does the terrible yawn and stretch move and Stiles laughs at him for all of the break but still holds his dumb hand and chances a kiss on the cheek when Derek flushes.

When they get out of the cinema and the weather has gotten significantly chilly Derek strips his jacket, draping it over Stiles’ shoulder and says, “Keep it, it suits you.”

Stiles pretty much swears on his Jeep he’ll marry the shit out of this man, and he’s a man of his word.


	2. hs au, dork boys flirting on the bus, nerd!derek

Technically, Stiles doesn’t need to ride the bus.

_Technically_ , he has a car and a license and enough allowance money to fill the tank, so Stiles has no need whatsoever to ride the bus to and from school every single day.

Logically, he shouldn’t even want to. It’s loud (which Stiles doesn’t really have a problem with), the driver is permanently stoned and infringes a traffic law at least thrice a day, the seats are uncomfortable and there’s always that _one_  asshole who likes to tease Stiles (which Stiles _does_  have a problem with).

His baby blue Jeep is infinitely better than the bus. There’s just one little thing that Stiles’ Jeep doesn’t have.

“-it’s not as if pre-history isn’t _fun_ , but it’s just not as cool as _actual_  history. There’s barely any records at all of anything, there’s a truly uncomfortable amount of _speculation_  and I just don’t think-” Derek continues ranting, looking over at Stiles for support and Stiles dutifully nods because _what else can he do?_

Ladies, gents and everyone else in-between and beyond, meet Derek Hale, known history nerd, co-captain of the basketball team, honorary boy scout and Stiles’ crush since _forever_.

So here he is. Riding the stinky, uncomfortable bus because Derek is _in it_  and honestly these few minutes Stiles gets with Derek, without Derek’s small hoarde of adoring fans and scary friends are precious to him.

It’s the only place where he can _attempt_  to charm Derek without someone poiting their finger and laughing because there’s just no way a kid like him gets someone like _Derek_.

Look Stiles is fully aware that Derek is out his league, but _hey,_ weirder things have happened and what’s the harm in _trying,_ right?

There’s just one little problem with trying. And that is that Derek seems to be completely oblivious to every and all advances. Like, _painfully_  oblivious.

“Are you listening to me?” Derek huffs, eyebrows drawing down in aprehension.

He’s so cute. Stiles wants to kiss his eyebrows. Is that weird? That’s probably weird. 

He’s so beyond caring though.

“Sorry,” he apologizes, takes a steadying breathe and then blurts out one of the corniest pick-up lines he has in his reportoir. “I just got lost in your eyes.”

Derek huffs a laugh. “You’re ridiculous.”

Stiles sighs and slumps back into his seat. “You were talking about France right? Revolution! Guillotines! Drama! Lice! Fun for the whole family!”

Derek snorts and punches his arm, gives him this _smile_  that absolutely makes Stiles’ heart stop for a second, which Derek probably knows about since he’s a _werewolf_.

Well, Stiles is pretty sure he is, anyway. Either that or he belongs to some kind of weird cult.

Those Hales aren’t even a quarter as subtle as they think they are.

“Did you know,” Derek starts his eyes sparkling with excitment and Stiles considers if it would be really that terrible to just kiss him. “That during the revolution, some women in France would sit in front of the guillotine and knit while they watched heads roll? They even had jewelry fashioned to look like the guillotine.”

“I guess they lost their heads over it,” Stiles quips and has to refrain from patting himself on the back when Derek starts snortling in the most adorable way known to men.

Stiles slumps against Derek’s shoulder, telling the butterflies in his stomach to _shut the fuck upr_.

“Hey Derek, you’re like the guillotine.”

“Wha-”

“You make me lose my head.”

Derek laughs in a way that’s dangerously close to a giggle and squeezes Stiles’ knee.

“Good one,” he compliments, still completely goddamn oblivious that Stiles _meant it_. “Anyway, have you done your chemistry project, because I’m struggling with mine a bit, I swear Harris is trying to murder all of us through _chemistry_.”

“Our chemistry is almost unbearable,” Stiles aknowledges.

Derek nods. “Can you help me?”

“With chemistry?”

“Yeah.“

The bus comes to a screeching halt in the closest stop to Stiles’ house and he sighs, reaches for his backpack.

“Lydia is better at it than me,” he says because apparently he’s a _moron_  who likes to sabotage himself. “But I’ll be more than happy to help you.”

Stiles gets up and moves towards the door backwards, expecting Derek to confirm they’ll be up for a round of studying.

“I prefer studying with you, you’re the only person that makes me get chesmistry,” Derek says, the tips of his cheeks coloring slightly and _ohmygod_.

Stiles trips off the steps and sprawls outside the bus on the pavement because _ohmygod_  was that flirting? Did Derek Hale just flirt with him?! Is this real life?

“Are you okay?” Derek asks, sticking his head out of the window and frowning worriedly down at Stiles.

Stiles raises himself on his elbows, looking up at Derek.

“Peachy. So, chemistry. Tomorrow after school?” Stiles says, not bothering to get up from where he’s sprawled on the warm pavement.

The bus’ doors close loudly and Derek grins down at him.

“It’s a date.”

The bus drives off and Stiles fist bumps at the sky because _hell yeah._

_It’s a date._


	3. hurt/comfort, college student!stiles, supportive derek hale

Growing up Stiles had to learn not to rely on people.

He had his dad and Scott, but he learned fast and hard that they couldn’t always be there for him. He learned it curled up in a bathroom stall at school, gasping for breath, he learned standing in front of his teacher at PTA night when his dad couldn’t come, he learned it with a throbbing cheekbone when he was sucker punched on the playground.

Even now Stiles has five back-up plans in case everyone else fails. Even now he tries not to rely on anyone when it feels like his life is falling around his ears and there’s nothing he can do about it.

He has a pack now.

He has people he can rely on, people he can call and who _will_ come for him as soon as they can.

And then he has Derek.

“What,” Derek answers the phone, sounding grumpy and disgruntled as if he had just been woken up.

“I-“ Stiles gulps, lost for words because how can he explain this? How can he explain that he’s going to get kicked out of college when everyone has all these _expectations_ for him?

“I’ll be there in ten,” Derek declares as simple as that, no explanations needed.

Stiles sits down on his dorm room bed, clutching the sheets between his fingers and wondering if soon he’ll have to collect all of his things and leave.

He hates this, hates how His breathing starts to pick up, how his palms turn clammy and his vision starts funneling, going dark at the edges.

Before he can work himself up to a full blown panic Derek is just _there_ , one hand around the back of Stiles’ neck grounding him, the other clutching at Stiles’ hand, slowly coaching him down until Stiles can focus again, until his breathing comes easier.

“That was not ten minutes,” Stiles tells Derek when he can speak again, dropping his eyes when he notices how close Derek actually is. “My dad can’t keep getting you out of speeding tickets you know.”

Derek’s quiet for a beat, looking intensely into Stiles’ eyes, searching.

“Your dad actually likes me, he won’t mind getting me out of them.”

Stiles huffs, looks back up until their eyes lock, losing his breath all at once again.

Derek’s still holding his hand, squeezing it rhythmically, and slotting the thumb of the hand around Stiles’ neck just under his ear.

Sometimes Stiles hates how much he relies on Derek, especially for situations like this, things he should deal with on his own. He hates how Derek is always there for him, not matter what. All he needs to do is breathe one stuttering word and Derek is _there_.

He loves it too.

“After this he’ll like you more than me,” Stiles confesses, hates how his voice wavers because he’s going to disappoint his _dad_.

“Stiles, you could go on a five day bender and get drunkenly married in Vegas and your father would still puff his chest up with pride every time you come up in a conversation. There’s nothing you can do that will make him be disappointed.”

“Not even getting kicked out of college?”

There’s a pause.

“They’re gonna kick you out?”

Stiles shrugs one shoulder. “Possibly.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“How doesn’t it-“

“I don’t have a college degree. I didn’t even _go_ to college. Are you saying that I’m any less for it?”

Stiles presses his lips together, shakes his head resolutely because _no_ , of course not. Derek is-

Derek is wonderful in everything he does.

“It’s not everything.”

“But-“

“ _Stiles_. We’re all proud of you. You’re-,” Derek blushes to the tips of his ears. “You’re amazing. In every way. Getting kicked out of college won’t change that.”

Stiles looks away, heat crawling up his neck and settling on his cheekbones. He squeezes Derek’s hand. “You’re a sap,” he tells him, feeling lighter than he has since he received the news.

Derek rolls his eyes, squeezes his neck once before letting go and sitting beside him on the bed. He keeps holding Stiles’ hand.

“Whatever happens, it’ll be okay.”

Stiles looks over at him, bites his lip and whispers, “Promise?”

Derek gives him one of his rare smiles, pulls at Stiles’ hand until he tips over and is basically cuddled against Derek’s side.

“Promise.”


	4. ANGST, like really angsty, pre-sterek, future fic

Stiles adjusts his stupid bowtie for the fifth time in front of the mirror.

“Stop messing with it,” Lydia demands. “You’re going to mess it up.”

Stiles huffs, scrubbing his clammy palms on his dress pants, trying his best to wipe away the sweat.

“I don’t know why you’re so nervous,” Lydia remarks, flawlessly applying her eyeliner. “It’s just a party.”

“I’m not nervous,” he lies.

Lydia snorts and uncaps one of her lipsticks, looking at it critically before reaching for another one.

“Stiles relax, it’s just a party. We have one every year. You know everyone there. You know there’s someone keeping a close eye on the wolfsbane laced stuff, there’s no imminent threat on the pack. Everything’s fine. _Relax._ ”

“I know that,” he huffs, sitting down on Lydia’s too fluffy mattress and promptly jumping back to his feet, pacing the room.

“ _Stiles_ ,” Lydia snaps, looking at him through the mirror. “Will you calm down? He’ll show up.”

“How do you know that? I just- maybe I was too forward? Maybe-“

“Stiles,” this time Lydia says his name on a sigh. “ _Everyone_ can see how completely gone Derek is on you. Relax, he’ll show up.”

He bites his lip, cheeks flushing. “You think so?”

“I _know_ so. Now come here, help me choose the right heels for this dress.”

Stiles smiles, small and hopeful and follows Lydia to her _ridiculous_ shoe closet.

Derek will show up. This has been years in the making, of course he’ll show up.

«»

Stiles had ran into Derek late in the semester of his first year at college at a little snobby coffee shop that overpriced their coffee, but that had pastries which were so orgasmic that people were willing to shell out the money for it.

To say that it had been a surprise would’ve be the _epitome_ of an understatement.

Derek had looked good, lighter, the slightest hint of crinkles in the corners of his eyes, Cora chattering away beside him.

“Ohmygod,” Stiles had whispered, taking half a step forward towards Derek and as soon as Derek’s head had snapped towards him it had been like Stiles couldn’t quite contain himself, striding forward with a slight bounce in his step, a grin splitting his face.

Derek had seemed happy to see him too, taking half a step forward to meet Stiles, eyes all crinkled up at the corners and fond, hands doing this jerking motion as if he was about to reach out, but hesitated.

Stiles hadn’t had hesitated. It had been _so long_ since he had seen Derek, so much had happened and there was _nothing_ that would have kept him from hugging the life out of this man, reassuring himself that Derek was _alive_ and _okay_.

They talked after that, exchanged numbers, solemnly promised to see each other again because they _would_ see each other again.

Like hell would Stiles let Derek leave his life for a third time.

«»

He can’t really help how he keeps glancing at the door, waiting for Derek to walk in, waiting for the confirmation that it was real, that what they had wasn’t all in Stiles’ head.

It’s two hours into the party and Derek hasn’t shown up yet.

Stiles has hope and he _hates himself_ for it.

Derek is rarely late for _anything_. He wouldn’t be late for something like Stiles’ birthday party. If he cared he wouldn’t be late for this.

“Maybe he got caught up in something?” Kira tries tentatively.

Stiles sighs, “Yeah, maybe.”

«»

They had kept good on their promise.

Stiles and Derek saw each other at least once a week for coffee dates and for whatever random thing Stiles decided to drag Derek to.

Sometimes it was a paintball tournament happening in the local park, sometimes it was a movie, sometimes it was a particularly interesting exhibit at the local history museum since Derek was very secretly a dork.

Stiles loved it, treasured and looked forward to every second they could spend together. It gave him hope that one day they could take that step forward, the one that would topple both of them over the metaphorical abyss of love and couple-hood.

He had been holding off asking Derek if he wanted to go on a date for a while, a real _date_ , a please-spend-the-rest-of-your-life-with-me date.

The courage had only come to him last week.

“There’s going to be a party Saturday,” Stiles had started, too casually to be casual.

Derek had looked amused, smiled behind the lip of his coffee mug and raised a questioning eyebrow.

“I was wondering if you’d like to come. Everyone’s going to be there.”

Derek nodded, smiling with his eyes. “I’d love to.”

Stiles had rubbed his clammy palms on his thighs, heart beating double tempo, nervous about what he had to blurt out next.

“I was thinking- if,” he had taken a deep breath, gotten up and grabbed his backpack for a quick escape. “If you want to be a- _thing_ \- with me. A couple,” he had winced at his own clumsiness then, dropping his eyes to the floor because he just couldn’t handle Derek’s wide eyes, the dropped mouth, the flushed cheeks. It was too much. “Then show up. If you want to do that. The, um, dating thing. If not just- _don’t_ , I guess.”

And after that wonderful word vomit Stiles had hightailed it out of there as fast as his legs could carry him.

In retrospect, it hadn’t been the _smartest_ of moves, but Stiles wasn’t known for thinking rationally around Derek Hale.

«»

There’s a small pond of paper wrap at Stiles’ feet, a pile of gifts in front of him on the coffee table.

Stiles is more focused on the paper wrap at his feet, staring at it blankly with his head in his hands.

Derek didn’t show up.

Stiles should’ve known he wouldn’t. Not when Stiles is such a _mess_ , so broken, so far away from who he used to be.

_Why would he want to?_

He feels two people sit at either side of him on the large couch.

“I’m sorry, bro,” Scott says quietly, placing his arm over Stiles’ shoulder reassuringly.

Lydia sits at his other side. He knows it’s her by the arm that sneaks around his waist to hold him, quietly supportive.

“Yeah,” Stiles says and hates how his voice breaks with it. “I’m sorry too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i wrote this one because someone asked me for angst. this is SO NOT MY THING. generally, i'm a fixer, not a breaker, so [here's the not!fic that fixes everything](http://crossroadswrite.tumblr.com/post/141253474188/omg-rita-no-i-demand-a-fix-to-the-break-up-fic-my), at the time i didn't actually have time to write a full continuation


	5. bed sharing, getting together, future fic, happy background pack

“Do you need help with that?” Erica asks, wiggling her eyebrows and Stiles is _afraid_.

“Do I want you to use the excuse of applying sunscreen on me to feel me up? No, thank you.”

Erica pouts. “Aw, I’d let you grope me too if you asked, Stiles.”

“Derek!” Stiles squeaks because _nope_ , no, nuh-huh. He came out here to have a good time, he does not need to feel attacked right now and he’s not stupid enough to let Erica get her sunscreen-y hands on him for a second time. Her nails are _sharp_ , son.

“Erica, leave Stiles alone,” Derek says passively, serenely floating on his blow up neon blue matress, one hand lightly skimming the water.

“I was just trying to be helpful, boss.”

“Stop trying, you’re failing.”

Erica makes this little indignation sound in the back of her throat and gets up, which in an on itself is a dark omen.

“You need to learn how to share,” she tells him. “Besides, it’s not like you won’t have Stiles for the night.”

“What,” Stiles squeaks.

Derek lifts his sunglasses and frowns at her. 

“What. What do you-” he starts and is rudely cut off by a smirking Erica dive bombing into the pool so hard she tips Derek’s air mattress over.

Stiles is too busy laughing at Derek’s startled wet bunny expression to remember her last words.

«»

Derek stands in the middle of the room, glaring at the tiny little bed pushed to one side as if with the power of eyebrows he’ll be able to duplicate it.

Stiles stands next to him, hands on his hips and tilting his head at the singles’ bed.

The single singles’ bed.

There should be two of them in the suite Derek booked for them to spend their summer vacation in. 

There’s rooms for everyone else, with plenty of beds for everyone else. Except for them. Who had agreed to share a room do to their single status.

“Well,” Stiles says. “This is a problem.”

Derek huffs. “I’ll sleep on the floor.”

“Don’t be stupid. We can both fit in there.”

“ _Stiles_.”

“What? We fit in my bed that one time with the faeries and the tail thing,” Stiles reasons, gesturing vaguely towards Derek’s butt.

It’s a very nice butt. He loves that butt. One day, he hopes to be eternally commited to that butt. Sadly that day will have to wait due to Derek being an oblivious _idiot_.

Derek sighs for so long Stiles worries he’ll asphixiate himself.

“ _Fine_.”

“Fine,” Stiles cheers and divebombs into the bed, rolling around because he’s a nice to-be-boyfriend and knows Derek doesn’t particularly like the hotel smell.

«»

So, in Stiles’ plan there might’ve been an itty bitty teeny fail.

Just a fact that he hadn’t considered about the sleeping with Derek thing.

And that fact is that he is _sharing a bed with Derek Hale, ohmygod_.

So it’s understandable that he might be a little nervous, might be freaking out a little bit, might be wiggling and tossing and turning about like a wiggly tossy-turny thing.

“Stop it,” Derek growls, huffing when Stiles accidentally elbows him in the ribs.

“Don’t be grumpy, I’m just trying to get comfy.”

Derek huffs and grabs Stiles, turning him on his side and holding him still against his chest and well, okay.

Stiles is being spooned. 

By Derek Hale.

Okay.

He’s fine with this. 

Yup.

There will be no boners whatsoever.

“Go to sleep Stiles.”

Stiles holds very, very still, whispers out a soft “’kay” afraid to disturb this configuration of bodies.

This sleeping position. This-

Great, now he’s thinking about the Kama Sutra.

Stiles squirms and Derek makes this soft noise, almost imperceptible, so Stiles has to do it again - purely for science - and gets the same sound, a little higer and Derek huffing, trying to cant his hips away except he can’t because there’s a wall behind him.

Stiles grins to himself because that, ladies and gentlemen, is what the cool kids call a _boner_.

He would fist pump if Derek wasn’t holding his arms down, because turns out boners will be had but not by him.

Well, not _just_  by him.

This is awesome and an amazing development on his Marry Derek Hale and Have His Adopted Babies Six Year Plan.

With some luck, he might even make it a _four_  year plan.

“You okay there buddy?” Stiles asks because he’s a shithead and he thinks he’d pop something if he didn’t.

Derek growls. “Bro code rules,” he invokes.

“Aw do you want me to say no homo?” Stiles sniggers. “What a shame. I was ready to go full homo with you.”

“What.”

“What?”

“You like me?”

“For a while now, thanks for noticing.”

Derek stays quiet for a beat and Stiles can’t see him but he knows he’s struggling with something.

“Same,” Derek settles on saying.

“You would also go full homo for me?”

“Yeah.”

“Cool,” Stiles nods, grinning at himself like a lunatic. “Does this mean I can keep with the butt wiggles.”

“Not before we go on a date,” Derek declares like he’s some sort of dapper gentleman trying to protect Stiles’ virtue.

Stiles butt wiggles experimentally.

Derek throws him on the floor.

«»

They take the rest of the vacation to go on dates and be made fun of by literally everyone else.

Except Erica who highfives him and asks if they can have a threesome and then gets thrown into the pool by Derek for it.

As to butt wiggles, Derek makes him wait until the third date so he can nakedly butt wiggle all over that and Stiles will say it was completely a hundred percent worth it.


	6. h/c, werewolf!stiles, supportive!derek, established relationship

It’s not like this is new information for Stiles, that he killed his mother, but it’s just-

A part of him _hoped_  to be wrong. A part of him hoped all the accusations his mother had hurled at him late in her sickness were just the dementia speaking, that the accusations his dad had hurled at him, piss drunk out of his mind and missing his wife, were false.

Stiles normally loves being right. He thrives on it, preens, parades around with a smirk and his chin held high when it happens.

It’s like a cruel joke by the universe that he has to be right in this too, in such a cruel thing.

“Stiles?” he hears, snapping his attention away from his own thoughts.

It’s still weird, how the weight of an alpha voice makes him jerk his head like this, makes him stand at attention. He _hates_  it.

Stiles was never good with authority. He’s still not very good with it, not even when it comes from his best friend.

“Go away Scott!”

“Stiles, come on, I could hear you panicking all the way down the street.”

“I’m indecent, go away.”

“I’ve seen your dick. Open the door or I’ll break it down.”

“No you won’t,” Stiles rolls his eyes. He’s pretty sure his dad would kill Scott if he threw the door down and they both know Scott can’t very well afford pay for a new one.

There’s a moment of silence. “You have to speak with someone.”

“No.”

“Do you want me to call your dad?”

“No.”

“Lydia?”

“No,” Stiles huffs because really. It’s been long enough that Scott should know better.

“Derek?”

That gives Stiles pause. 

He knows Derek has blue eyes like him, knows he feels guilty for his family, but-

“No.”

“You hesitate,” Scott accuses.

“No, I didn’t. Don’t call Derek.”

“Too late, he’s already here.”

“What? Scott!”

“He’s gonna break down the door if you don’t open it.”

“He is not going to-”

Derek breaks down the door.

“What the fuck?”

Derek glares at him, stomping over and plopping himself down cross-legged in front of Stiles.

“Talk.”

“No.”

“Scott go away.”

“I don’t think-”

Derek turns to glare at him and Scott rolls his eyes, holds his hands up in a pacifying gesture and backs off.

“Now talk,”

Stiles crosses his arms over his chest and glares back.

Derek raises an eyebrow.

Stiles sighs and deflates.

“Whatever. My eyes are blue.”

“I know.”

“Blue is for killers of innocent people.”

“Blue is for guilt,” Derek counters.

“What?”

Derek sighs, hunching over a little bit. “Magic doesn’t know if they’re innocent or not. It’s not _sentient._  It just reacts to you, and if you think you killed someone innocent then that’s what it’s going to manifest as,” he makes a complicated face like he’s struggling with something.

“You believe that?” Stiles asks, drawing his knees towards his chest and wrapping his arms around them.

Derek shrugs a shoulder. “My mom told me that. She wasn’t the type of person that lied.”

They’re quiet for a moment. Stiles is digesting this new information, processing it and Derek is just giving him time. Derek’s good at that.

“It doesn’t change anything, you know,” Derek says calmly. “The color of your eyesdoesn’t change anything.”

Stiles huffs a little because he knows it does, he knows that his life has just became thirty five times more difficult, especially when hunters come knocking around.

He flashes his eyes at Derek spitefully, childishly.

Derek grabs his chin and stares into his eyes.

“It doesn’t change anything to me,” he says calmly, let’s his eyes light up their usual eletric blue and Stiles can’t really help, flashing his eys back, mantaining eye contact like that, both of them with their flaws in full display.

Derek smiles, this tiny little thing, that softens the corners of his mouth and curls them up.

“Different,” he says quietly, solemnly. “But still beautiful.” And he kisses Stiles once very softly on the lips, like he has been doing for a while now.

Stiles, kisses back, can’t really fight this, not when Derek is like this.

And well, he always thought blue was pretty.


	7. good alpha derek hale, pre-sterek, stiles' self-worth issues

As soon as Mr. Harris walks in, slamming the door and smacking his briefcase on his desk, Stiles knows this isn’t going to be a good day for him.

It isn’t going to be a good day because Mr. Harris is mad, and for some reason he seems to love using Stiles as a stress ball.

Stiles hunches a little on himself, sliding down his chair and trying to make himself look as small as he possibly can.

Maybe if he stands really still, Mr. Harris won’t notice him and will chose someone else to bully.

“Mr. Stilinski please sit straight, if you’re not here to take this class seriously and pay attention you can get out.”

Stiles bites his tongue and sits straight, keeping his eyes down.

He really _really_  doesn’t need this today.

“Your father should really look into finding a female figure to teach you how to properly sit because he clearly can’t do it.”

Stiles jerks like he’s been slapped, opens his mouth to answer but Scott’s fingers digging on his knee stop him.

He click his mouth shut and says nothing.

He can’t afford to get detention today. They have a pack meeting after school to discuss what to do with the new coven of witches in town and he knows if he misses the pack will just do whatever and not inform him and then someone will invariably end up hurt.

Stiles settles for looking down at his desk and silently fumes, wondering just how expensive it would be to fill Mr. Harris’ car with jello.

As the class progress Stiles goes from feeling _angry_  to feeling miserable.

Mr. Harris seems to be on a roll, throwing around words like idiot, stupid, nuisance, spaz, failure, _disappointment_.

By the time the class ends there’s a slight trembling to Stiles’ hands and a utter feeling of defeat taking over him.

“Stiles are you-”

“I think I’m going home,” he mumbles.

“But the pack-”

“Don’t need me. I’m just a nuisance, Scott I’d get in your way-”

“What- Stiles _no_. You know Mr. Harris is just a dick, you’re not-”

Stiles shakes his head, harshly scrubs a hand over his face.

“I’m not feeling well, just- I’m going home, okay?”

Scott presses his lips together, frowning in that _worried puppy_ look of his.

“Okay,” Scott says, sounding like agreeing is causing him some sort of pain. “I’ll pass by your house after the pack meeting.”

“Sure,” Stiles shrugs, not really couting on it.

Scott gives him a hug before getting in his dirtbike and driving off.

Stiles scrubs his hand over his face again, tells himself that getting upset is stupid because Mr. Harris is _stupid_  and this whole thing is idiotic.

It’s just _stupid_. Like he’s stupid, he guesses.

He sighs again and gets in his car so he can just go home and be sad by himself.

«»

Stiles would’ve _liked_  to be sad by himself but that seems near impossible.

As soon as he gets home and sprawls on the bed, kicking his shoes off and not even worrying about the rest of his clothes, his phone has chimed about half a dozen times with messages from the pack wondering where he is, saying they’re sorry, offering to fight Mr. Harris for him.

It’s touching, it is. But sometimes even the kindest of _i’ll fucking fight them for you_  offers can’t stop that little voice in your head that is giving your abuser reason, that little voice who pokes you constantly and says  _yes you’re worthless, a waste of space, a disappointment, the reason why your father drinks, the-_

The window of Stiles’ bedroom slides open noisily.

Stiles groans into his pillow. “Go away Scott.”

“Not Scott,” a familiar voice announces, and under any other circumstances Stiles would’ve flailed right off the bed at Derek Hale’s voice but right now he just doesn’t have the energy.

“Go away Derek,” he ammends, but of course Derek doesn’t go away. Derek gets mighty comfy in his room, taking his jacket off and kicking his boots off too, setting them neatly by the window, just before he sits on Stiles’ desk chair and pulls it forward so he’s closer to the bed.

“Do you not understand english? Leave, deja my cuarto, ”

“Ño. Tell me what’s wrong.”

“I don’t want to.”

“Too bad, I’m your alpha and that wasn’t a question. Tell me what’s wrong.”

Stiles groans loudly into his pillow. “Don’t you have a pack meeting to get to?”

“Hard to have a pack meeting without my emissary there don’t you think.”

“I’m not needed there. You guys do fine without me.”

There’s a beat of silence where Stiles thinks Derek is about to agree and leave but then, “Who told you that?”

“No one told me that. You don’t need to be a genius to see that you guys do just fine without me.”

“Stiles,” Derek sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose. “You are one of the most important members of this pack. There _wouldn’t_  be a pack without you.”

“Yes there w-”

“You convinced Scott to listen to me,” Derek starts and actually raises one finger, ticking them off as he goes. “You got Erica and Isaac to understand that they should do good with what they got, you keep Jackson in check, you’re the only reason why the Argents even agreed to established a truce with us after what my uncle did to one of them. Without you I _wouldn’t_  have a pack.”

“That’s not-”

“Are you calling me a liar?”

Stiles finally props himself up, sitting on the bed instead of sprawling like a sad toast, just so he can squint at Derek better.

“That’s an unfair question.”

Derek shrugs like he doesn’t care.

“And I know _exactly_  what you’re doing, wolfboy. So it’s not going to work.”

Derek shrugs again. “You’re sitting up, you smell less sad. I’d say it worked.”

Stiles rolls his eyes, pretends he doesn’t feel a little better better after this little conversation, after hearing how important Derek thinks he is for the pack, how maybe he’s not a complete waste of space.

“Do you want a hug?” Derek asks, and _that_ makes Stiles startle so bad he knocks his knee against Derek’s.

“What?”

Derek does something complicated with his face.

“I’m trying to- be better at this alpha thing. _Connect_  or whatever,” his eyebrows dash down aprehensively as he says it. “I’m not gonna offer again.”

Stiles blinks carefully at him. “Yeah,” he says slowly. “I’d like a hug.”

They both scoot to the edge of their respective sits and Stiles thinks there would be some awkwardness before they did it, but Derek doesn’t give time for it to get awkward, wrapping his arms around Stiles and pressing him against his chest.

Stiles also thought the hug would be awkward and stiff. It’s not. Derek’s arms around him and his solid chest pressed against Stiles’ make him feel safe, the hands gently rubbing his back make him feel special.

“You’re really good at hugs,” Stiles tells him.

Derek doesn’t answer, just keeps hugging and lets Stiles take his time, only pulling back when Stiles does, and he must admit it’s a while until he can pull back.

“Thanks,” Stiles says, feeling an overwhelming need to duck his head away and settles for scrubbing at the back of his neck instead, a little awkwardly.

“Of course,” Derek says solemnly. “Scott should be coming over with the others with pizza.”

“Okay.”

“Don’t miss any more pack meetings.”

“Aww, but missing pack meetings gets me alpha cuddles,” Stiles teases.

Derek stares at him for a long time. “If you want a hug, you just need to ask for one.”

“Wait seriously?”

“Seriously.”

Stiles grins. “Aw you like me.”

Derek rolls his eyes and scrubs a hand over Stiles’ hair. “Obviously. You _are_  in my pack,” he says easily.

Stiles bats his hand away and it’s the weirdest thing, because it’s only now, in this exact moment, that it hits him. He’s part of a family now, a pack. And pack needs each other, a pack has each other’s backs. He’s part of a _pack._

And it’s in this moment that he starts thinking that maybe dragging Scott with him to look for a dead body in the woods wasn’t such a colossal mistake after all.


	8. kid fic, kid!sterek, babysitter!laura

Laura is the oldest out of the kids in her household, so it’s safe to say that , growing up helping the adults with the little ones, she’s pretty good at taking care of them

That’s why she does _this_ during summers. Babysitting for random families in Beacon Hills who upon hearing the Hale name don’t even think twice before hiring her.

The Hales protect Beacon Hills and its inhabitants, it’s like the worst kept secret of this town.

“Do you have a boyfriend?” Stiles asks, sticking his tongue out and agressively coloring the spiderman lineart she gave him earlier.

Out of all the kids she babysits, Stiles might be her favorite.

“No, I have a girlfriend.”

Stiles looks up at her, confused. “Like a friend that’s a girl?”

Laura snorts and shakes her head.

“No. Like a boyfriend but she’s a girl. We still go on dates and do boyfriend stuff though.”

The only reason she’s telling him this is because she knows how liberal and accepting the Stilinskis are. She’d have to be way more careful with some of her other kids.

“So cool,” Stiles gushes and looks over at where Laura’s little brother is working on his summer homework like the _dork_ he is.

Derek isn’t that much older than Stiles. Just a handful of months.

“Are you going to marry her?” Stiles asks next.

Laura laughs. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

Stiles puts his red pencil down and looks critically at his drawing before picking the blue one up.

“Does that mean _I_  can have a boyfriend?” he asks, and sneaks another look at her brother.

Derek’s looking down resolutely, blushing to the tips of his ears.

“If you want one,” she nods, reaching over to ruffle his hair.

Stiles lets out an indignant squack and bats her hand away.

“But you have to be careful. There’s some people that can be _really_  mean if you decide to have a boyfriend.”

Stiles furrows his eyebrows. “Why?”

Laura shrugs. “They don’t think it’s right.”

“Why?”

“A book said so.”

“That’s _stupid_.”

Laura laughs. Stiles is _definitely_  one of her favorite kids to babysit.

“Yeah, it’s pretty stupid.”

“If I wanna have a boyfriend I’ll have a boyfriend,” Stiles decides. “And if anyone is mean to him I’ll beat them up and my daddy is the Sheriff so he won’t arrest me or anything.” He nods to himself like he’s laying down his future plans to get a boyfriend and beat bigots up. “I’ll even _marry_  them if I wanna.”

Derek is looking at Stiles with something akin to wonder, tilting his head a little as he regards him.

“If I had a boyfriend, I’d beat the mean people up too,” Derek says quietly.

Stiles beams at him like the sun and puts down his blue pencil, scoots closer to Derek’s side of the coffee table and thrusts his spiderman drawing at him.

“For you,” he offers.

Derek blushes a shade darker and it’s all Laura can do not to coo at them. She settles for taking her phone out and snapping a quick picture.

Derek takes the drawing with a shy “Thank you” and reaches into his pocket, offering Stiles a piece of candy he probably received from some old lady. He’s like a candy magnet that one.

Stiles takes the candy and pops it into his mouth, chewing on it thoughtfully before he shuffles over to Laura and tugs on her shirt until she leans forward and he can reach her ear.

“Can I date boys if they’re older than me?” he whispers a tad too loudly.

Laura can see her brother startling from the corner of her eye, looking intently at them.

“If they’re not too old, sure,” she whispers back.

Stiles sneaks another glance at Derek.

“What if they’re a werwolf?”

Laura jerks so badly she almost falls out of her chair. “What?”

“Like you and Derek.”

“How do you-”

“You growl when you play Mario Kart,” Stiles tells her, still whispering.

Laura doesn’t really know what to say to _that_  so she settles for answering to his last question. “Yeah, you can date them if they’re a werewolf.”

“Cool,” Stiles declares before running out the backdoor.

“Mom is gonna be mad,” Derek tells her.

Laura opens her mouth to answer but is interrupted by Stiles crashing back into the house, tracking mud everywhere and _ohboy_  Ms. Stilinski is _not_  going to be happy about that.

He stands in front of Derek with his hair flopping down on his forehead and a mess of wildflowers clutched in his hand, some with the roots attatched. He thrusts them in Derek’s face, who is just sitting there look awestruck.

Laura clicks record on her phone.

“Laura said I can date boys even if they’re older and even if they’re werewolves like you and I _like_ like you and you’re _really_  smart and can do a _backflip_  which is just _so cool_  so I want you to be my boyfriend, okay?”

Derek looks at the makeshift bouquet of flowers, at Stiles, turns to Laura with the most precious expression she has ever seen on her brother’s face and then back at Stiles.

Slowly, he reaches forward and grabs the bouquet, smiles down at it shyly, cheeks red. “Okay,” he says.

Stiles grins and sits down next to Derek, leaning on him.

“Cool.”

Derek holds his hand, and then turns so he can kiss Stiles’ cheek.

Stiles flushes.

“Cool,” Derek echoes.

This time Laura does squeal.


	9. kid fic, alive claudia, alive talia, kid!sterek

“But Mama, they’re taking so long,” Stiles whines, bouncing on the balls of his feet with barely contained energy.

“Just be patient, wiewiórka.”

Stiles scrunches up his nose distastefully. “I’m not a squirrel Mama. I wanna be something cool! Like a fox!”

“I’ll call you a fox when you can say it in polish.”

Stiles sighs long suffering and makes plans to call Babcia latter. Or maybe he’ll ask Tata who knows a lot of words in polish but not as many as Mama because his Mama is the bestest and the smartest _ever_.

Mama flips a page in her Sudoku puzzle and looks back up at him. “Why don’t you go play before Derek arrives?”

“Because it’s not _fun_ without him, duh.”

“Boo!” someone whisper-yells in his ear.

Stiles startles, wind milling his arms and letting out a tiny squeak.

He turns to see Derek smiling shyly at him, still holding his mom’s hands.

“Derek!” Stiles yells and tackles him to the floor, giggling.

“I waited for you for a gazillion and one years, Derek,” he complains.

“Whoa,” Derek whispers, pushing Stiles off of him and getting up. “We should go play then because that’s _so long_.”

Stiles nods in agreement and grabs Derek’s hand, running towards the playground and being stopped short by his mother’s voice.

“Stiles, aren’t you going to say hi to Ms. Talia?”

Stiles ducks his head in shame and kicks at the dusty ground.

“Sorry Ms. Talia. Hi, Ms. Talia.”

Derek’s mom smiles at him, looking amused and Stiles thinks that has to be a good thing.

“Hi Stiles.”

“Can we go now?” Derek asks. “Stiles waited a gazillion and _one_ years, Mommy.”

“Sure. Careful to not hurt yourselves,.”

“Yes, Mommy,” Derek replies dutifully, just before pulling Stiles towards the playground.

“We should go on the _big slide_ ,” Stiles says excitedly, steering them towards the big kid slide that’s so tall, it almost touches the clouds.

“Stiles no,” Derek starts shaking his head, digging in his heels. “It’s _too_ tall.”

“Are you _scared_?” Stiles taunts.

Derek’s bottom lip wobbles. “Yeah. What if we fall off and hurt ourselves.”

Stiles rushes to wrap his arms around his neck and hugs him tight because Derek crying makes _him_ cry and it always feels like he did something really really bad when it happens.

“You can do it,” Stiles says encouragingly. “We can do it together! And I’ll hold your hand all the time and we can be the _first_ kids in our class to go on the big slide.”

Derek still looks a little unsure.

“What if you fall?”

“You’ll catch me. And I’ll catch _you_ if you fall,” Stiles announces as sure in his words as anyone could be.

Derek bites at his lip before nodding.

“We’d do it first than _anyone else_. Even Jackson! That’s bragging rights _forever_ ,” Derek says, awe struck as he stares at the imposing structure.

“That’s why we gotta do it, okay?”

Derek clutches Stiles’ hand a little more tightly and grins. “Okay. I trust you.”

Stiles beams so hard he can almost feel his face splitting and cracking.

“ _Awesome_ ,” he crows, pulling Derek towards the dauntingly tall slide.

In the end they manage to climb the stairs and they go down at the same time and Stiles holds Derek’s hand.

When they reach the bottom Stiles is so happy he smooches Derek’s cheek and punches the air like he sees boys doing on TV.

Derek blushes until it’s time to leave again, but that’s okay because Stiles is blushing too.

“Mama can I marry Derek when I grow up?”

“Of course, kochanie. You can marry whoever you want.”

“Cool,” he says and the next time he has a playdate with Derek they make rings out of flower stems and kiss under the big tree behind the Hale house.

(They do it again twenty years later, but this time the rings are a little more durable.)


	10. flower dog, domestic, established, fluff

Stiles drags his feet up the stairs of their elevator-less apartment and shuffles towards the door, bone tired after a shift at the station.

He takes the keys out of his pocket and jingles them a little, waiting a moment before he actually inserts them in the lock, so he can hear the telltale sound of claws on hardwood floor as their dog trots up to the door and barks, excited to see him.

Stiles smiles softly, opening the door and peeking inside, making sure their cat doesn’t get any ideas and tries to flee down the stairs to go bother poor Mrs. Leighton who always lets Glitter in and feeds her too much gourmet cat food.

Robin barks at him, a flower crown precariously slipping on her head. Stiles can’t help the wide grin that stretches his lips until he can feel the corner of his eyes crinkling up, when he takes in the former police dog Derek and his kids convinced him to adopt wearing a flower crown.

(Although, if he’s being honest, there wasn’t much convincing to be done. Stiles had said yes before his kids could even finish saying please.)

“Shh,” he whispers. “It’s nap time, Robin, don’t wake up the kids.”

Robin makes a soft woof and pads forward, slipping her head under Stiles’ hand until he scratches her behind the ear not covered by the flower crown.

“Good girl,” he praises, closing the door as quietly as possible.

“You’re back late,” Derek says, quiet as he can be not to disturb tiny sleeping werewolf ears. He pads into the living room in soft flannel pajama pants and one of his baggiest shirts, his hair a mess, flattened on one side of his face and fluffed out in the other. There’s a pillow crease on his face and _god_ Stiles has never been more enamored in his life.

He needs to have a minute of silence to mourn the fact that he didn’t come home in time to see Derek asleep on the king sized bed with their kids sprawled all over him, a story book thrown carelessly on the nightstand.

“Nasty car crash by the preserve. No one died but-“ he shrugs a shoulder in a _ya know how it is_ gesture.

Robin softly headbuts his leg, asking for attention, and the flower crown almost topples over to the floor.

Stiles picks it up and sets it more securely on top of her big head, smiling down at the retired police dog.

He’s glad they adopted her. She’s great with the kids, and Derek seems to love her even more than their kids do, which is saying something since they’re both in that phase where everything fluffy is _the best thing ever, daddy that’s why papa’s beard is so great_. _It’s fluffy too!_

“You did this?” he asks, pointing at the flowercrown.

The tips of Derek’s ears go read and he looks down and away.

“She wanted to look pretty,” he says as an explanation and Stiles’ smile grows fond and so stupidly happy that he gets to have this for the rest of his life.

“You’re a dork. C’mere.”

Derek huffs and crosses his arms over his chest, the perfect picture of petulance.

Stiles raises an eyebrow and Derek rolls his eyes, starts dragging his feet towards him with the closest thing to a pout Stiles has ever seen on his face.

Clearly he’s been spending too much time with their kids.

Stiles opens his arms for a hug which makes Robin make a little annoyed sound at nothing being pet anymore, and lazily pad off towards the couch.

Derek ducks into his arms, looping his arms around Stiles’ waist and burying his face in Stiles’ neck, doting the tiniest, softest of kisses there.

Stiles hugs back, melting into his husband’s broad chest and letting the day’s stress slowly leak out of him, one steady rub of Derek’s hand on his back at a time.

“Welcome home.”


	11. post s4, derek hale pov, introspective fic, pre-sterek

Derek doesn’t have many contacts on his phone.

From the few he has, only Laura’s has her actual name on it because he figures actually putting the name of the person there means caring, and Derek doesn’t care. He can’t afford to anymore.

Laura’s dead now. The only person he cared about is dead, and Derek can’t make himself delete her number, he can’t make himself erase the only person he cares about from his phone, however absolutely moronic that might sound.

His sister is dead, keeping her number and name on his phone won’t make her come back, won’t make it any less real.

The whole thing is an exercise in pointlessness and Derek shouldn’t even be thinking about it, not when it’s been months, but the thing is-

Stiles called him.

Stiles called, and when Derek had put this lost teenage boy’s number on his phone alongside the number of his bratty friend Derek really didn’t care.

He’s evolved maybe. Progressed from really not caring to just not caring.

So when ANNOYANCE flashes across his screen and he picks up to hear Stiles start babbling about witches or whatever other goddamned thing he decided to poke his nose into, Derek feels wrong footed. He feels like he’s lying to himself by putting Stiles under that name.

It upsets him, and that’s what brought him here: staring down at his phone, sitting in his flashy sports car on the side of the road because even if Derek is a werewolf and his chances of surviving a car crash are pretty high, he was taught to pull over to take a call, to not endanger the fragile little humans with his reckless behavior just because he can.

It’s pointless to say he’s deleted that name and is currently agonizing what to put Stiles as.

He can’t just write Stiles.

He can’t because he doesn’t care. He can’t because caring is dangerous. He can’t because the mere fact that he’s agonizing over it instead of just writing something snappy means he’s two steps too close to the whole situation.

Derek thinks briefly about just writing BRAT and letting it be, but unfortunately he already used that one for Scott.

He scowls down at his phone, glares at it and wills his brain to come up with something that’s safe, something that will put some distance between them.

He grunts in frustration and punches the pads of his fingers on the keyboard until it spells out TOLERABLE.

Derek doesn’t care. But after everything they’ve been through, after punches in the face that seemed to tether him back into his living body and hours in a pool, he feels like he owes this to Stiles. He feels like he should give him the courtesy.

«»

Everything falls apart in Derek’s life.

There’s backstabbings and dead people and a fucking darach. Just an ever evolving shitstorm of horribleness that he needs to deal with.

It’s like the universe entertains itself by trying to see just how catastrophic it can make things for him.

The answer is pretty fucking catastrophic.

But somehow, through it all, Derek still finds himself here: sitting in his “soccer mom car”, waiting for his sister to get back from the gas station, staring down at Stiles’ name on his phone.

He frowns down at it and wonders why it’s only Stiles that sends him into these states of agony over the stupidest most meaningless of things.

Except it’s not meaningless, and Derek still can’t make himself type out Stiles’ name .

“What are you doing?” Cora asks, dumping a bunch of candy on the car’s floor.

“Nothing,” he answers and types out the first thing he thinks of.

HE DOESN’T NEED YOU.

A reassurance to himself that he did the right thing.

That’s all he ever tries to do, even though he seems to fail epically at it again and again and again and again.

Derek tries not to think about it.

He’s miles from Beacon Hills and he’s got his sister back. It doesn’t matter anymore.

He shouldn’t care, anyway.

«»

Somehow he ends back in Beacon Hills because turns out Stiles lives to prove him wrong and he does need Derek, against all odds and probabilities.

It doesn’t go down well. Not at all.

For a while Stiles’ number reads FIND HIM and Derek doesn’t really have a chance to change it before the whole Kate debacle, and then the whole slowly dying debacle.

He hits a pretty rough patch, makes peace with himself, changes Stiles’ number again.

CAREFUL, it reads and where before it had been a reassurance to himself now it’s a warning of how careful Derek has to be. With himself and with Stiles.

They’re both broken and desperate and it would be so easy. So stupidly easy just to say fuck it all and go for it.

But Derek needs to be careful. He tries and fails not to care every single day.

He’s been failing at not caring since day one, just another thing he sucks at.

Then Mexico happens and he almost says it. Almost. Just as he’s dying too, which would’ve be incredibly selfish, but Derek doesn’t care anymore. He’s dying, let him be selfish.

He doesn’t die, though.

He evolves.

Masters the full shift, becomes stronger, in no need of an Alpha, and decides that it’s time to leave again.

There’s too much in Beacon Hills for him to bear living there, and one really good reason to stay still doesn’t make up for the mountain of bad reasons.

He almost died and he was given a second chance, he was given the same gift his mother had, and that’s like a wakeup call for him to actually start living.

So he leaves with Braedan and asks if she can drop him off at Cora’s.

He taps his phone on his thigh a couple of miles before they reach the border. Then he decides to unlock the screen and pull up his contacts list, scrolls until he finds what he’s looking for.

Slow and measured he types out six letters, and when he’s done it feels a lot like the start of something.

STILES.

Derek breathes, leans back against the car seat and pulls up his message thread with Stiles and types out three little words.

_Whenever you’re ready._

Just that. No explanation.

There’s no need for one. Stiles will understand. Stiles will know because he’s smart and because Derek is horrible at pretending.

«»

It takes about a year before Derek receives an answer to that non-question.

_I’m ready_ , it reads.

Derek smiles quietly down at his phone, trying to not draw attention to himself in a dinner table full of werewolves and pack and family, and starts making plans to go get Stiles wherever he is.


	12. canon divergence, post season 4,banshee!stiles,future fic,college student!stiles

The first time Stiles screams he’s eight and sitting on his mother’s bedside, half asleep, feeling bone-deep tired and raw like no eight year old should ever feel.

It takes him by surprise, to say the least. One minute he’s holding his mom’s limp hand, forehead pressed into the smooth hospital bedsheets his eyes fluttering closed, and then next he feels an unbearable pressure inside his head, voices coming from every direction whispering and screaming and crying until Stiles presses his hands to his ears and whimpers as the pressure builds and builds and builds and he feels like he’ll die.

He doesn’t die. The heart monitor connected to his mom beeps ominously and before Stiles knows what he’s doing he screams, feeling a devastating loss take over him even before his mom flatlines and doctors and nurses burst into the room.

Ms. McCall is the one that picks him up and takes him out of the room, trying to shush him, to make him stop screaming, telling him he’ll hurt himself please, Stiles, sweetheart, I know, but you need to stop.

The first time it happens, he screams his throat raw. It takes him close to a month to be able to talk again and he, in his eight-year-old mind, firmly believes this is punishment for talking too much, for never shutting up even when his mom started getting sick, for driving her mad because he just wouldn’t. shut. up.

No one tells him otherwise.

He doesn’t find out what he is for a long time, and he doesn’t scream again for even longer.

He’s not like Lydia that every other day finds herself screaming herself hoarse for some stranger.

Stiles screams when his mom dies, feels it building in him when Peter went to attack Lydia but luckily he got there soon enough that he wouldn’t finish the job. He thinks he would’ve screamed when the bomb went off in the Station. The bomb he planted there. The only reason he doesn’t is because there’s a demon fox spirit controlling his body at the time, crooning how Stiles squeals so pretty while he breaks him apart from the inside out.

He whimpers an excuse of a scream when Allison dies.

But that’s all in the past.

Stiles is in college now, twenty-two and trying to build a life for himself that doesn’t involve cheating death on a daily basis. He grew out of that nasty hobby senior year of high school, and he intends to keep out of it.

The last time he screamed was when Theo almost killed his father, and thank God and whatever other higher deities be that he got there on time.

That last time gave him hope that he could get there in time, could prevent it.

Beacon Hills is quiet now. They deactivated the Nemeton, dealt with the leftover supernaturals that were there to create havoc. His dad is safe, the pack is safe even if they’re spread out through the country, only coming together on holidays and the like.

It’s in the past, like he said, and Stiles has absolutely no intention of putting himself in a situation where he’ll tease his banshee senses out of hiding.

That is, of course, until he wakes up one Saturday morning with an all too familiar pressure headache that’s building and building and building until it opens the flood gates for the voices whispering inside Stiles’ head.

He doesn’t let himself panic; tries to focus and listen instead of blocking the voices out, until he hears one whispered name over and over again.

Derek.

Stiles takes a deep breath, hands trembling as he pushes the sheets back and gets out of bed, stumbling through his room as he gets dressed, grabs his keys and heads out the door.

He hasn’t seen Derek in years, wouldn’t dare even contact him on the off chance that the masochist would decide to come back to Beacon Hills and fuck his life even further.

Stiles has no idea where the man could be. He doesn’t even know if they’re even in the same state, but that doesn’t stop him from getting in his car and driving.

He drives for almost a full 24 hours, only occasional stopping for gas and gas station snacks. At some point he drives off the interstate and into some forgotten little town in the middle of nowhere, and from there he drives through an even more forgotten dirt path that leads to a mansion with an array of children playing in the front yard.

Stiles has a minute to panic because these are children and the pressure in his brain increases and expands, encompassing more than Derek in it.

The children scatter as soon as they see the Jeep coming up the driveway, shouting for someone Stiles doesn’t know and for Derek.

Stiles steps out of the Jeep and looks around, begging his stupid senses to let him know what he needs to look out for, what’s the danger here.

“Stiles?” he hears Derek ask confusedly, stepping into the porch. “What are you do-”

Stiles steps forward, then breaks into a run right for Derek, putting himself in front of his old friend just in time for the first arrow to fly out and imbed itself in his shoulder blade, intercepting it’s trajectory to Derek’s heart.

Derek’s eyes go wide with fear as he catches Stiles when he stumbles forward.

It takes barely two seconds for Derek to realize what’s happening, to pick Stiles up and retreat inside the house, shouting at someone to get the kids out through the tunnel.

The pain is a bitch, that’s for sure. But Stiles has had much much worse.

He clutches at Derek’s shirt and takes a deep steadying breath, the first since he woke up.

The pressure is starting to fade; that ominous feeling that Stiles hates is loosening its grip on his heart and that’s good.

“Take this shit off my back and let me help,” Stiles says, squirming until Derek sets him down on his feet.

They don’t have any time to lose, the house is surrounded and they both know it. It’s not hard to realize that the mansion is actually an orphanage which is full of kids that need to be led to safety as quickly as possible.

“What are you even doing here?” Derek asks gruffly, bracing one hand on Stiles’ shoulder before pulling the arrow out.

Stiles grunts in pain, rolls his shoulders and winces. That’s gonna hurt like a motherfucker for a while. He should probably go to a hospital after all is said and done.

“It was my turn to save your ass. I’m pretty sure you saved mine last. Now what do I need to do?”

Derek spares him a brief twitch of his lips before his expression turns serious and lowkey panicked again.

“Help me gather the kids, check if no one is hiding under their beds.”

Stiles nods and gets to work, gathering around stray kids, coaching some from under their beds and being surprised when they stop cowering as soon as he says his name is Stiles and he’s a friend of Derek’s, as if they’ve heard of him and know to implicitly trust him.

Half an hour later finds Stiles holding a young girl’s hand as he walks side by side with Derek down a dark tunnel that supposedly leads somewhere safe, their very own escape route in case of a fire or anything of the sort.

“We have got to stop meeting like this,” Stiles tells him, mostly jokingly, wincing when a kid tugs on his hand and pulls at his wound.

Derek offers him a smile and Stiles gives himself a minute to marvel at that, at how Derek can smile now even during a high stress situation like this.

“Agreed,” he says quietly not to disturb the sleeping infant he has pressed against his chest. “What do you say about going out coffee once this is done with?”

Stiles grins, “Sounds good.”


	13. drunk!derek, established, parents!sterek, future fic, fluff, kid fic

It’s way past midnight when someone starts pounding on the first door so hard, Stiles wakes up and flails his way off the couch.

“Ohmygod,” Stiles whispers, picking himself up and rushing to open the door, sending a worried glance upstairs. “Coming! Coming, cool your jets,” he huffs just as he rips his door open and finds Derek smiling goofily at him, propped up on Boyd’s shoulder and listing dangerously forwards.

“Stiles,” he croons, and basically leans forwards enough he falls face first on Stiles’ shoulder, grasping his shirt with clumsy greedy fingers. 

Boyd holds the back of Derek’s shirt, holding some of his weight for Stiles. “You got him?”

“Yeah, I got him,” Stiles mutters, gripping Derek’s hips and making sure he’ll stay upright when Boyd lets go. “Thanks for getting my husband smashed on a school night.”

Boyd shrugs and smirks a little. “Erica says she’ll make it up by taking you out and letting _you_ get smashed.”

Stiles squints dangerously at him, which is probably dampened by the fact that he appears to have an oversize cat nuzzling him and pressing sloppy open mouth kisses on his shoulders.

Boyd raises his eyebrows; Stiles rolls his eyes and huffs. “Fine, just make sure you don’t do it on a school night. The kids are _asleep._ Was the pounding really necessary?”

“He was excited to see you again,” Boyd says and then turns, throwing a wave over his shoulder.

Stiles sighs and adjusts his grip on Derek, trying to gauge if he can take him to the bedroom or if he’ll have to settle in for tucking him on the couch.

“Come on, big guy,” he mutters. “It’s time to get some water in you, get you into your jammies and then bed.”

“Noooooo,” Derek whines. “Don wanna sleep. Wanna stay up ‘n look at you.”

“Look at me? That’s kinda creepy, Der. Are you reverting to your old ways? Should I be worried?” he says, gently guiding Derek inside and closing their front door.

“You’re pretty,” Derek sighs and makes both of them almost take a nose dive right into the coffee table. “I like your face. Your eyes are beautiful. Like stars. Made of amber.”

Stiles snorts, and tries to maneuver him around a little bit so he has more leverage to drag him along to the bedroom. He _really_  doesn’t want to spend the rest of the night in their couch.

“You’re such a poet.”

“Thank you,” Derek says gravelly, and then gives him one of those dopey smitten smiles that make Stiles’ chest constrict and his own eyes crinkle in the corners. 

Stiles tries to focus in getting them through the hallway that leads to their room with minimal distractions, which of course doesn’t work when Jacy pokes her head out of her room and squints at them.

“What’re you doing?” she whispers.

Derek almost throws himself across the space to get to his daughter, the only thing stopping him being Stiles’ hand at his waist.

“Papa went out with Auntie Erica who gave him a little too much Happy Juice. So now Daddy has to put Papa to bed.”

“Oh. Okay,” she nods agreeably. “Can I get night-night kisses?”

“Of course, sweetheart,” he says because it’s not like he can say _no;_ and before he can really do anything Derek gets free from Stiles’ grip (not hard if you’re an Alpha werewolf honestly) and is kneeling in front of their daughter, peppering her face with kisses and crooning about how he loves her so much.

If you had told sixteen-year-old Stiles that Derek Hale was a happy-loving drunk he would have probably laughed in your face. But the cold harsh (or maybe sweet warm, in this particular sitaution) reality is that he _is_  the most loving and adorable drunk Stiles has ever dealt with.

As heartwarming the scene is, Stiles regretfully has to go over to break it off before Jacy gets too excited and can’t fall back asleep, or worse, before her soft giggling wakes up the other kids, and then it would be a _mess_.

“Okay, okay. Give Daddy a night-night smooch and go back to bed so I can make Papa sleep, otherwise Papa will be _very_  grumpy tomorrow.”

Jacy giggles one last time and pushes at Derek’s face, smooching his forehead before turning to Stiles and offering hers to be smooched.

Stiles dutifully dotes a kiss on her forehead before hushering her back inside her room with a soft “Good night.”

Derek looks at him with the most soulfully lost puppy eyes.

“Okay, big guy, off to bed with you too,” he says and offers a hand to help Derek get up.

Derek pouts but takes his hand, gets one knee off the ground before gasping softly and smiling brilliantly at Stiles.

“Stiles. Stiles, I love you so much.”

“I know, but we need to-”

“So much, and our _kids_  Stiles they’re so adorable and _cool_. You’re cool too. I like you, we should get married! Stiles, let’s get married, I love you so much, marry me, please, please? I’ll be good, I promise.”

Stiles smiles down fondly, not even believing he’s married to such a sap.

“We’re already married, Derek. See, I have a ring and everything,” he says and wiggles the hand Derek is holding so the titanium band glints.

Derek looks unberably sad for a moment, before his face lights up like a lightbulb went off and he clumsily tugs Stiles’ ring off his finger.

“There, we’re unmarried. Will you marry me now? Please? Pretty please?”

Stiles smiles down at this ridiculous adorable man that _always_  does this, this man that has so much love in his heart that sometimes it just spills, like it’s doing right now.

“Yeah, I’ll marry you. Now can I have my ring back?”

Derek smiles at him like he single handledly gave him the entire night sky, and clumsily slips Stiles’ ring back on.

“Thank you for marrying me again, I love you,” he says solemnly and finally lets Stiles help him get up.

“I love you too, now _bed_.”

Derek pouts but let’s Stiles guide him to the bedroom and helps him put on his pajamas and then proceedes to cuddle Stiles like it’s going out of style.

All in all it’s a pretty good life.

«»

Derek wakes up entirely too early in the morning with someone jumping excitedly on his stomach.

“Papa, Papa, Papa, Papa, Papa-”

He groans and grabs his kid by the waist wrestling him down until he’s smooched against his chest and a squirming, giggling mess.

“Shhh, inside voices, buddy. Papa’s head hurts.”

His kid gasps softly and whispers, “Ohno,” and starts petting Derek’s cheek. “There there, Papa.”

Derek relaxes into the mattress and squeezes his eyes together, trying to will his hangover away.

“Eric James, what did I tell you about coming to wake up Papa today?” Stiles whispers, socked feet padding into the room.

Eric squirms until he’s mostly hiding under the blankets.

Derek cracks an eye open to see Stiles shaking his head fondly down at their son. He pads over to Derek’s bedside, balancing their baby daughter on his hip before he leans down and kisses hsi forehead.

“How’re you feeling?”

“Head hurts,” he mumbles and lazily lifts a hand, pawing at Stiles’ arm to try and get him in bed with him.

“I’ll get you some water and see if I still have some of Lydia’s magic hangover healing thing.”

Derek twists his nose because Lydia’s magic hangoever healing thing tastes _terrible_.

Stiles snorts and leans down. “Trade you kids? I have to get this mister ready for when Scott comes to take them to school.”

Eric wiggles further down the bed, curling into a ball.

Derek grunts ins something that he hopes sounds vaguely like a yes and makes grabby hands for his baby daughter, letting her cuddle up to his shit and blow spit bubbles at him, one hand securely on her back to make sure she doesn’t roll, while Stiles pulls the sheets back and hoists Eric over his shoulder.

Derek blinks up at the ceiling and drifts in and out of conscious for a while, willing his headache to go away. He has no idea how much time has passed when Stiles comes back with a steaming cup of foul smelling stuff carefully balanced on a plate with some of Derek’s favorite snacks, and his laptop tucked under his other arm.

He puts the plate down on the bedside table on Derek’s side, and throws the laptop on the bed, freeing up his hands to pick up their baby daughter so Derek can sit up and drink that _thing_.

“Drink up, buddy, so you can feel better. Now, I have about five hours before my shift at the station and a hardrive full of tv shows and movies what are you in the mood for while we wait for your hangover to pass?”

Derek shugs down the awful drink in as few gulps as he can manage, and tries to wash off the taste by cramming a bunch of candy in his mouth, before he wiggles down on the bed and lays his head on Stiles’ lap, just below where their daughter is happily sitting.

He squints at the laptop screen and the countless titles displayed there. “The Looney Tunes.”

“Nice,” Stiles praises and puts on some of the older episodes on, and putting his hand on Derek’s hair as soon as he’s done with his laptop duties.

Stiles often says that the downfall of getting drunk is hangovers, and while Derek will have to agree that hangovers in and on themselves _such_  pretty badly, he can’t really see a downside when he gets to have fun with his pack and have his amazing husband either nursing his hangover away or groaning into Derek’s stomach, complaining loudly about his own hangover.

And for moments like this one, he’s willing to suffer through a million hangovers.


	14. hs au, jealous!derek, popular!stiles, shy!derek, misunderstandings, angsty with happy ending

Derek hates Stiles.

He hates his laugh, loud and unbidden, how he throws his head back like he doesn’t have a care in the world and how everyone seems to be drawn to it. He hates his eyes, how they crinkle at the corners, how they squint in suspicion, how, if the light hits them just right, they look almost beta gold. He hates his moles, how they’re sprinkled over his skin, how they contrast with his pale skin and make him more beautiful than he needs to be. He hates his hands, how they fly through the air drawing art in the shapes they make when he talks, how his fingers are long, how they feel clapping Derek on the shoulder, gripping his arm, slapping his knee because Derek said something that Stiles found so funny he doubled over laughing.

He hates Stiles and how Stiles made him feel, _still_ makes him feel.

He used to have a few friends he could count on, before Paige, before his mom pulled him out of school to let him grieve and to get his shift back under control, but those friends stopped talking to him when Derek stopped talking to them. His mom’s decision to put him in a new school permanently closed the possibility of Derek trying to get those old friends back.

Readjusting to high school hadn’t been an easy ride for him, especially now, when he wasn’t as quick to smile, as quick to make jokes and goof around and brush things off.

Stiles had helped though.

Stiles with the bright smile and strong hands, who had seen him in the school’s office and volunteered to give Derek the tour of the school, offered to guide him to his classes, seemed excited that they had a few of those together, brushed off Derek’s grumpiness and awkwardness and pulled him along the hallways, introducing him to a staggering amount of people, calling out hellos to the ones that were too far away to introduce Derek to.

Frankly, after the first day Derek thought Stiles would leave him alone, but he Stiles was soon to fall into the habit of never doing what Derek expected him to.

To Derek’s surprise, the following day after his first class, Stiles had been right there, leaning against the lockers just outside of Derek’s classroom. He had smiled at him, fistbumped someone in passing and asked them if they were still on for post-lacross pizza madness, and then he had focused on Derek and told him since he was new Stiles was going to guide him around, _just to make sure you don’t get lost, dude_.

Stiles is bright. Bright and energetic and _intense_. It’s hard to have the sole focus of someone like that on you. It had made Derek shy, made him duck his head and follow Stiles around like he was some sort of stupidly lost dog.

Before the day was over, Derek had an open invitation to come to the post-lacrosse pizza madness and a brightly smiled offer to come over after school sometime to study.

Derek thinks he would’ve been fine if they just studied. He thinks that if Stiles only took advantage of his ability to memorize everything he reads, special when it concerns History, he could’ve dealt with Stiles’ friendship, but it _hadn’t_ just been the studying.

It had also been the smiles, and the convincing Derek to _bake_ with him, the _horrible_ puns and the wide eyed awe when Derek turned out to be actually good at baking; it had been the lost hours and accidental sleepovers when they stayed marathoning Star Wars and Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones and having heated discussions about books versus movies.

It had been Stiles looking at Derek and _seeing him_ , Stiles not treating him with kiddie gloves like his family did, Stiles saying _dude, you are my favorite_ , and Derek believing it.

Derek had never been anyone’s favorite before. It had made him smile every time Stiles looked at him and said it, every time Stiles gave him that _look_ , the one that Derek noticed Stiles didn’t give anyone else. It was _Derek’s_ look, the one thing of Stiles that belonged to him.

And Derek had a _friend_. Someone who listened to him and complained to him and someone who made his life a little bit better.

But, of course, reality arrived alongside Scott McCall, prodigal best friend forever, returned from living with his father and Derek _hated him too_.

He hated how Stiles smiled at him, he hated how Stiles started ditching Derek for him, always apologizing, always telling him he just had to hang out with his best friend again for a little while, that they needed best bro forever time. And that had _hurt_ , because Derek thought _he_ was Stiles’ best friend, even though he should know better, should know that the moments where he managed to steal Stiles away from the stream of people constantly vying for his attention were outliers and that he had no place in Stiles’ life.

Derek was quiet, prefered to measure his words, only spoke when he had something to say, was often brash and awkward. Stiles was loud, talked out of his ass with barely any brain-to-mouth filter, filled silences with words, twisted sarcasm into something funny that captivated an entire audience.

Derek _should’ve_ known better. But he hadn’t, and Stiles hadn’t given him a warning that their friendship had an expiration date and he _hated him_. Hated stupid Stiles Stilinski that had it so easy with making friends, and stupid Scott McCall who had come out of literally nowhere to take Derek’s place. Or better yet, to reclaim his place, at Stiles’ side, like it should be.

Derek had just been a benchwarmer for Scott and that fucking hurt.

But he understands his place, he knows when he’s not wanted, so he just stops.

Stops meeting Stiles after his classes to try and have some stolen moments with him in the hallways, stops packing extra snacks for him, stops waiting around and watching him at Lacrosse practice, stops going over to study, just _stops_.

Scott’s there to fill the spaces Derek left open, Scott’s there to be Stiles’ _favorite_. Stiles had said it himself, the same exact words he gave to Derek, thrown at Scott with carelessness.

So he stopped, and he didn’t expect Stiles to notice.

But of course, Stiles never does what Derek’s expecting, does he?

It takes exactly three days. Three days of stopping any and all interaction with Stiles, three days of _moping_ , like his pack likes to call it, and fending off concerned family members.

Three days until Stiles corners him in the back of the library with big wet hurt eyes and a frown on his face.

“What’s wrong?” he asks.

“Nothing.”

“Derek, you’ve been avoiding me,” he accuses, looks at Derek and waits for an answer. When Derek gives him nothing he bites his lip, ducks his head. “Did- Did I do something wrong?” Stiles asks and his voice trembles horribly.

“No,” Derek denies quickly, powerless to do anything else when Stiles looks this vulnerable. He hates himself for putting this look on Stiles’ face. “You didn’t do anything.”

“Then _why_ have you been avoiding me?”

Derek shrugs one shoulder, looks away from Stiles’ pleading face because it’s causing him physical pain. “You have Scott back.”

“I- what?”

“You don’t need me to hold his place for him anymore. You have your favorite back, right? Your best bro?”

“And you’re not my best bro,” Stiles says slowly.

Derek grits his teeth and continues looking away. “Yeah I know that.”

“In fact, you’ll never be my best bro.”

Derek didn’t really think the way his chest has been constricting could get worse. He was wrong.

“Derek,” Stiles says softly, voice soothing, the hint of a smile just on the edges of it. “Derek, look at me.”

When Derek makes no move to do so, Stiles touches the tips of his fingers to Derek’s chin and turns his head and Derek hates it, he _hates_ how he lets Stiles just do that, he hates himself for letting him, hates Stiles for having this much incomprehensible power over him, hates Scott for not having just stayed wherev-

“I like you,” Stiles says, looking at Derek from under his eyelashes, blush high on his cheeks. “You’re never going to be my best bro because I _like you_. I don’t _want_ you to be my best bro, I never did. I want you to be… more.”

Derek’s heart trips over itself, he’s pretty sure his mouth is hanging open a little and he’s looking at Stiles like a complete idiot. “More?” he asks confusedly, afraid he got it wrong.

Stiles gives him the tiniest, coyest smile, and shuffles forward a little bit. “More.”

“But Scott-”

“You don’t need to be jealous of Scott-”

“I am _not_ je-”

“He’s my best friend, I’ve known him forever and it was good to have him back, it was good to have someone I trust back so I could tell them all about you, about how you know more than even _Lydia_ when it comes to History, about your eyes that I still can’t figure out the color of, and how they light up when you get excited, how they crinkle at the corners when you give me that shy little smile that you think I can’t see but I _can_. How you love your family so much, even if they seem to drive you insane, how you _listen to me_ , really listen, like not even Scott does, and remember the weirdest of rambles and facts I throw up daily.

"I _like_ you, Derek, you’re not filling anyone’s spot _for_ them, you have a spot all for yourself, front and center.”

Derek is blushing horribly and he knows that, knows that his ears must be a deep red color that fades out towards his cheeks, that he looks both dumbstruck and awestruck, knows that he’s been stupidly blind towards his own feelings and didn’t want to see what was right there in front of him.

“You like me?” Derek blurts out, voice breaking on the letters.

“I _really_ like you.”

“Oh. ” Derek tries to duck his head, is kept in place by Stiles’ fingers tilting his head up. “Yeah, I- same.”

Stiles quirks an eyebrow at him, even as a blinding smile takes over his features, lighting his face up like the clouds parting at the climax of a movie, showing the heroes everything they’ve ever wanted, everything they’ve been looking for.

“Same?”

“I like you too,” Derek manages to make himself admit, and at that Stiles looks beyond himself, as if someone had just given him his greatest wish on a silver platter, as if he hadn’t been expecting Derek to say the exact words back to him.

“Well,” Stiles says awkwardly. “Yeah, _same_.”

There’s two beats of silence between them when Derek looks at Stiles and Stiles’s eyes flicker between Derek’s eyes and lips.

“I’m gonna kiss you now?” Stiles says, but makes it sound like a question, willing to go at Derek’s pace, _knowing_ that Derek needs it without having to ask.

“Okay,” Derek agrees. He thinks that at this point, Stiles could ask him to rob a bank with him and the answer would probably be the same.

And then Stiles is leaning forward; Derek is holding his breath; Stiles bypasses his lips and kisses him on the corner of the mouth, so achingly sweet and loving that something jagged inside Derek breaks and then slowly pieces itself back together, a better version of what it had been before.

“Okay,” Stiles breathes out, smiling like a smitten idiot as he pulls back, and Derek hates that he’s probably mirroring his expression, but adores that that such a tiny chaste kiss, exactly what he needed, put that expression on Stiles’ face because he _likes_ Stiles.

He likes his laugh, loud and unbidden, how he throws his head back when Derek tells him a lame pun from one of his uncle’s lame pun books. He likes his eyes, how they crinkle at the corners, how they widen in surprise, how they speak volumes all on their own. He likes his moles, how they’re like a treasure map now that Derek sees them at a new angle, how they contrast with his pale skin and make him as breathtaking as he’s always been. He likes his hands, how they fly through the air drawing entire galaxies of meaning in their flailing, how his fingers are long and certainly clever, how they feel tilting Derek’s chin just so, running the back of his knuckles through Derek’s cheekbone like he’s revealing in all the matter that makes Derek up, how they feel intertwined with Derek’s own fingers as they walk down the hallway.

He likes Stiles and how Stiles makes him feel.


	15. post season 2 finale canon fix, fix it fic, scott mccall fucked up and i aknowledge it, hale pack, h/c, pre-slash

It’s such an innocuous question. Or at least, it should be.

It’s the aftermath of everything, Stiles and Scott are driving back home, the silence heavy and uncomfortable for both of them, the adrenaline crash making them shaky. The Jeep sputters down the streetlamp lit road.

Stiles keeps gripping the steering wheel in tiny spasms, waiting for Scott to ask what the hell happened to his face. He doesn’t, hasn’t so far, and it’s something that’s making Stiles feel horrible and useless and miserable.

So he asks, “How did Gerard convince Derek to bite him, anyway?”

He expects a simple answer. He expects _blackmail_ or _Chris forced him_ or _he was under the effect of some weird thing they shot at him_ or _it was an accident_.

He doesn’t expect, “I made him do it.”

_I made him do it_.

Just like that.

“I’m sorry what?” Stiles asks, because certainly he misheard. _Certainly_ Scott wouldn’t do that. Scott who has all his perfect little morals and does the right thing time and time again.

Scott who looks at him, tired and weary. He gives Stiles half a shrug, “I’ve been putting mountain ash in Gerard’s pills so I knew the bite wouldn’t take. And then I just grabbed him and made him do it, you know.” He gives Stiles a tiny smile. “Pretty smart, huh?”

Stiles slams on the brakes, grips his steering wheel until his knuckles go white, grinds his teeth and tries to take steadying breaths, tries to calm down. And the only reason he tries it’s because Scott is his best friend and he knows Scott always means well, but this is just-

“Get out.”

Scott is completely still for a moment. “Stiles wha-“

“Get the fuck out of my car, Scott. I can’t deal with you right now.”

Scott huffs and opens the door, “I don’t know why you’re acting like this. It’s just Derek. We don’t even _like_ Derek.”

Stiles feels the way the wheel creaks under his fingers, how his muscles tense up, the building need to ball his fists up and act out.

“ _Get. Out_.” He growls, keeping his eyes on the road.

He can’t _believe_ Scott would do something like this, he can’t _fucking believe_ -

Scott hops out of his car. “Whatever, I’ll talk with you tomorrow when you’re less weird, okay?”

Stiles reaches over and slams the passenger door closed, doesn’t even look at Scott as he takes off, doing a sharp U-turn and heading back towards the train depot.

He finds Derek in the cramped staff bathroom, spitting water into the sink before he reaches for his toothbrush and starts aggressively scrubbing his teeth.

Stiles leans against the doorjamb, heart heavy in his chest as he looks at the image Derek makes, standing there in the weak bathroom light, trying to get the taste of someone’s blood out of his mouth desperately.

Derek spits into the sink and turns to glare at him. “What do you-“

His eyes find the bruise purpling Stiles’ cheekbone and his sentence tappers off.

“I wanted to make sure you were okay. Scott told me what he did.”

Derek’s shoulders hunch on themselves, fingers gripping the sink until it cracks.

“You didn’t know?” he asks, sounding lost.

Stiles takes half a step forward because he would _never_ -

“I wouldn’t do that, I would never force you to bite someone like Gerard. The bite- you said it’s a gift, right?”

Derek nods, almost imperceptibly but there.

“My mom- that’s what she used to say. She told me that whenever she bit someone, to remind me that the only reason she agreed to do it was because she trusted they _understood_ what we are. That they would do good with what was given to them.”

Stiles breathes out, leans against the wall and lets himself slowly slide down until he’s sitting on the floor. He feels tired, suddenly. Bone-deep exhausted, his whole body still aching from the beating he took.

“I’m sorry Scott made you do that,” he says softly, knowing it’s not enough, and it’s not fucking fair to make Derek go through something like that, not after everything, not after Kate and Peter and Laura and his _entire family_.

Stiles can’t even believe he’s still standing.

He doesn’t know, if all this had happened to him, if he would still be there, standing tall and waiting for the next beating the world decided to deal him.

Derek surprises him by sitting down across from him, leaning against the opposite wall.

“What happened to your face?”

Stiles touches the tips of his fingers to it and winces. “Gerard grabbed me after the game. I think it was supposed to be a warning to Scott about what could happen to the people around him if he broke their deal.” Stiles laughs and it sounds horrible and broken and hollow. “I guess a warning doesn’t really work if the person you’re trying to warn doesn’t give a shit.”

“I’m sorry,” Derek says gruffly.

Stiles tries on a smile, decides it doesn’t fit quite well on his face but wears it anyway. He bumps his foot against Derek’s. “Not your fault. Besides while he was beating me up, he wasn’t torturing Boyd and Erica.“

Derek bolts upright. “He had them?”

“Yeah, but- Derek, Chris let them go.”

Derek deflates. “They left then,” he says. “They didn’t- they didn’t want to stay. I was a bad Alpha.”

“You did your best.”

“I failed them.”

“You still did your best, and I think that they realized that. They’ll come back.”

There’s a beat of silence in which Derek looks down at his hands, and Stiles looks at Derek.

“I should go out and look for them.”

Stiles opens his mouth, the very beginnings of a handful of sentences wanting to start on his tongue.

_It’s late, you should rest._

_Stay with me, I don’t want to be alone._

_Are you going to be okay?_

_They’ll appear eventually, we should stay here._

What comes out is, “I’ll help you.”

“You don’t need to-“

“I’ll help you,” he repeats. “I’d rather do something productive than lay in bed and stare at the ceiling all night.”

“ _Stiles_ ,” Derek says and somehow he fits a million things in that one word. _Stop following me around. Thank you. I don’t deserve your help. I trust you. Thank you. I’m afraid you’ll get hurt._

“It’s been decided, big guy. You don’t want to go against a Stilinski when we’re set on something. It’s pointless,” he says, grins, and this time it fits better on his face, feels like the old thing he used to wear, comfortable and warm.

“I’m starting to see that,” Derek says, quietly, almost fondly.

Stiles struggles up, winces and almost immediately finds Derek already standing by his side, one hand wrapped around the back of his neck as the pain slowly ebbs away towards that one point of contact.

Stiles’ muscles go lax and he feels like he can breathe a little better.

“Thanks.”

Derek rolls his eyes and drags him towards the exit, passing a sleeping Isaac on the way out.

“Do you think we have time for McDonalds? Getting beat up by geriatric lunatics makes me hungry.”

Derek rolls his eyes and huffs a little aggravated _Stiles_ and it’s good, it’s them and Stiles doesn’t know why the concept of _them_ feels so comfortable, why Derek gripping the back of his neck and taking his pain away while pretending to be annoyed by Stiles is such a comfortable, getting-to-be familiar feeling, but it _is_ , and Stiles can’t find it in himself to question it right now.

By six am they have McDonalds wrappers littering the floor of the Jeep and Erica and Boyd conked out in the back seat, clutching at each other as an oldies station Derek picked plays in the background.

The sun has already risen, starting its lazy ascend towards the sky and bathing them in light as they drive back towards the train depot.

Derek’s leaning against the passenger seat’s door, clearly tired but refusing to close his eyes, sneaking looks at his betas and at Stiles, compulsively making sure they’re okay.

Stiles feels the familiar rubber of the wheel beneath his hands, the way the Jeep loudly stumbles trough plot holes as he squints at the road ahead, the morning sun warming his cheeks.

And in that one quiet moment, everything feels like it could be alright.


	16. sick stiles, happy bg pack, protective derek, established, h/c

“The end is nigh,” Stiles intones dramatically, and then proceeds to sneeze so hard he’s pretty sure he got snot on everyone sitting around him.

“This is disgusting,” Lydia mutters, making a face and scrubbing at her arm where Stiles presumably got snot on.

“Death is a disgusting affair, Lydia.”

“Don’t be dramatic, Stiles,” Kira tries sweetly, handing him over a tissue, or better, standing as far away from him as she can and stretching her arm as far as it’ll go so she doesn’t want to come in contact with Stiles. “It’s just a cold.”

“I’m _dying_ ,” he says and then proceeds to almost cough his lungs out, feeling miserable. “And none of my friends will _cuddle me_.”

“That’s because you’re disgusting and won’t stop complaining,” Lydia tells him sincerely and throws a box of tissues at his head.

“I hate all of you. My end days are _near_ and my friends don’t even _care_. It is in your darkest of times, when you truly-“

The door of Stiles’ room bursts open and Derek walks in slowly, frown scrunching up his face and a tray with a bowl of soup balanced upon it, along with a glass of water and what looks like medicine.

“You’re _sick_ not dying, Stiles. Now sit up before I _make you_ ,” he threatens and Stiles dutifully sits up on his bed, making grabby hands at the tray.

Derek rolls his eyes and very carefully sets it on his lap just before he starts throwing the small mountain of pillows aside and climbing in bed behind him.

Stiles wiggles and settles more comfortably between Derek’s legs, melting against his chest.

“Eat your damn soup,” Derek grumbles, wrapping his arms around him, making sure his open palm touches skin so he can take any of Stiles’ discomfort away from him.

“Mr. Grumpy Wolf,” Stiles mutters and eats his damn soup before Derek thinks about spoon feeding it to him in front of his friends. Stiles would lose all his street cred.

Derek rubs his face across Stiles’ shoulders and Stiles can practically _feel_ the frown.

“Stop frowning, it’s unattractive.”

“I don’t like it when you’re sick.”

Stiles smiles into his soup and pats Derek’s leg comfortingly.

“See this is how you’re a good friend to your dying friends,” Stiles says, blinking his grubby eyes up at Lydia and Kira.

“You two have been married for two years, Stiles.”

Stiles grins because _yeah they have_. “Semantics,” he says with a hand flap, and then sneezes right into his spoon, sending bits of soup flying.

Derek kisses the back of his neck apologetically like it’s his fault Stiles is sick. Lydia throws her hands up and calls them disgusting while Kira coos.

All in all, he might survive this one.


	17. hs au, secret admirers, pining boys in love, fluff, love confessions, origami

Stiles opens his locker on Tuesday morning to find a crookedly folded origami heart. He frowns at it, squints in suspicious, before he reaches his hand inside and picks it up, turns it in his hands.

“Hey, Scott. Did you seen anyone around my lockers this morning?”

Scott turns from where he has been making moon eyes at Allison and shakes his head. “Nah. Ask Derek, he’s always at school at ass o’clock in the morning.”

Stiles frowns down at the little heart, turns it in his hand to see if there’s something in the back.

_You’re pretty okay, I guess._

Stiles eyebrows raise to his airline and he huffs out a laugh.

It’s probably just some stupid prank. He shoves the origami heart in his backpack, takes the book he needed out of his locker and shrugs it off his mind.

«»

Stiles opens his locker on Wednesday morning to find a crookedly folded origami heart. Stiles takes it out, tilts his head in confusion.

“Did you-“ he starts, turning to Derek who immediately shakes his head. “Uh,” Stiles says and turns the heart on his hands.

_Maybe more than okay. Maybe pretty great._

“Do you think Jackson is trying to pull something?” he asks, frowning down at it.

“I don’t think Jackson would try to be nice to you,” Derek says, shoving a hand through his hair nervously.

“Yeah,” Stiles concedes, still frowning down at the paper.

“We’re gonna be late for class.”

“Yeah,” he says again and shoves the heart into his backpack.

«»

_You’re kinda cute._

That’s what Stiles comes back to on Thursday. Origami heart exactly where the others had been, a little less crooked, but still not the perfect lines Stiles can do effortlessly from all those rec center activities him, Derek and Scott used to have to do when they were younger.

“Do you think I have a secret admirer?”

Jackson spits his sprite laughing.

Stiles frowns down at the heart, carefully puts it in his backpack. “Yeah, I guess that’s kinda dumb.”

«»

On Friday he opens his locker and there it is again, front and center.

_You’re beautiful, even._

Stiles blinks down at it, looks at Derek who’s staring intensely at him, like he always does.

“Now I know they’re fucking with me.”

«»

_And when you smile, I can’t breathe._

Says Monday’s heart.

«»

_So I guess that means you’re breathtaking_.

Follows on Tuesday.

«»

_You’re the smartest person I know._

Is what Wednesday brings him.

«»

_You’re honestly funny. Don’t let it get to your head._

Thursday’s heart is significantly less crooked than the others.

«»

_I love how curious you are. This is probably driving you insane._

Friday tells him and it’s not wrong, it’s not even a little bit wrong.

Stiles has all of the hearts pinned to a corkboard back at home and he spends hours looking at them, trying to figure out who would send them, trying to figure out if it’s all just a joke or if this person is actually serious and if they are how he’ll have to say no because-

“Do you want to come over so we can work on our AP History project together?” Derek asks, leaning next to Stiles’ locker in all his puberty lottery winner, nerdy jock glory, with his kind earnest eyes and his adorable bunny teeth.

“Yeah, sounds cool,” he says and tries to be chill about it.

Derek gives him one of those quiet pleased smiles. “Cool.”

«»

It’s Saturday and he’s over at Derek’s, spinning lazily in his desk chair as he balances his pencil between his upper lip and nose.

“Are you listening to me?” Derek asks and Stiles jerks in surprise, drops his pencil in his lap.

“Sorry, just- thinking.”

He can’t get the paper hearts out of his head. He needs to know who’s sending them to him and what the hell their intentions are.

Derek puts down his pencil and looks at Stiles intensely like he does sometimes, like Stiles is a mystery that he’s trying to crack by the sheer force of staring.

“About the paper hearts?”

“Yeah,” he says, then smiles and throws his pencil at Derek. “Doesn’t matter, let’s get down to business to defeat the Huns.”

Derek rolls his eyes at him. “Stop quoting Mulan, we’re not even in that part of history.”

“That is a great song, okay, stop ragging on Mulan just because you’re lame and prefer Belle.”

Derek throws his pencil at his head and flushes. “ _Shut up_.”

Stiles laughs at him when the pencil goes in a wide arc and misses.

In the end, it doesn’t matter who’s leaving the paper hearts because they’re not the one person he wants them to be.

«»

It’s Sunday and it’s the monthly Stilinski-McCall-Hale barbecue, which means the baby pictures are coming out for their parents to tearful reminisce and laugh at their baby antics.

“Why come it’s me on humiliation duty? I had humiliation duty last time!” Stiles complains, slumping back on the couch, the album spread on his lap and gripped by his father on one side and Derek’s dad on the other.

“Because Derek is better at kitchen prep than you are and Scott won at rocker-paper-scissors,” his dad reminds him and gleefully flips to the next page on the album, showcasing a beaming Stiles with one hand thrown over Derek’s shoulder somewhere in their old middle school’s playground.

Stiles lets his eyes linger on Derek, how he’s blushing and looking down.

Stiles tracks his gaze and blinks in surprise when he finds a paper heart clutched in Derek’s hand.

“What’s this?” he asks, tapping the picture.

His father and Lyall lean closer.

“Oh that was in your old school, Valentine’s Day wasn’t it?” his father asks, looking of over at Lyall who smiles.

“Yeah, I believe so. Your teacher made you all make a heart, write something nice in it and give it to the person beside you. You used to sit next to Derek so he got one from you. I could swear he still has it up in his room somewhere.”

Stiles looks down at the picture, the gears slowly turning in his head before everything clicks into place.

«»

It’s Monday and Stiles arrived early at school, earlier than even Derek does, but it’s all for a good reason.

Derek walks in the double doors, furtively looking around, eyes going wide as saucers when he sees Stiles standing there, leaning against his locker.

“’Sup Hale?” he asks, trying to be cool about it.

“I- What are you doing here?”

Stiles shrugs a shoulder. “Oh, you know. Attending school, ensuring my future academic success, all that fun stuff.”

Derek looks around shiftily.

“Cool,” he says, in a way that implies it’s not cool at all.

“Aren’t you going to open your locker?” Stiles asks.

Derek looks at him suspiciously but does, carefully spinning the combination that Stiles knows by heart, before the little metal door slides open and he sees it.

In the middle of Derek’s locker there’s a paper box, perfectly and expertly folded.

Derek looks over at Stiles with wide eyes.

“Stiles-“

“Aren’t you going to open it,” he asks.

Derek takes the box out of his locker almost reverently and opens it, revealing brightly colored paper stars and sitting in the middle an intricate 3D origami wolf.

“I was always better at these than you were,” he muses, watching as Derek takes the wolf out with slightly shaky hands to reveal the message beneath its paws.

_Will you ask me on a date already, you moron?_

Derek’s face snaps towards him so fast Stiles feels sympathy for his neck.

“You’re- are you-“

Stiles shrugs a shoulder awkwardly, scrubs a hand over the back of his neck.

“You’re cute, and kinda sweet, and when you laugh I feel like I’m having a heart attack, _so_.”

“So,” Derek breathes out, voice awed and Stiles can’t help but look at this boy and how beautiful he is. “So, will you go on a date with me?”

“ _Fuck yes_!” Stiles all but screams, and then slowly takes the box out of Derek’s hands, sets it back in Derek’s locker and throws himself at him like it’s going out of style.

Derek catches him like he always does, and hugs him, whispers in Stiles’ ear, “You didn’t need to show off so much.”

Stiles laughs a little breathlessly into Derek’s neck. “I absolutely needed to.”

Derek huffs a laugh.

They both pull back, look at each other with smitten, idiotic grins, thinking about all the potential they have to be _Derek and Stiles_ and not just Derek and Stiles.

It makes Stiles a little nervous, that all their potential is become an actuality, but it also makes him excited. This has been a long time coming.

(And has to wait a little longer after Stiles and Derek get caught making out on school grounds three separate times in the same day.)


	18. idek, future fic, getting together, past angst, stiles fucked up but then came back to unfuck it up

Leading the life that Derek Hale does, he’s had a bit of everything on his doorstep: maniac hunters, rare shapeshifters that had no business being i Beacon Hills, witches looking for revenge, a bomb, a unicorn that just _wouldn’t live him alone_ , a cat that decided to adopt derek until Derek adopted them back and let them into the house, a lost child who was really a baby vampire which meant he had an entire hoarde of angry momma vampires at his door the very next day…

The list goes on for days, and is overall an ode to how much his life sucks sometimes.

He guesses that’s why he’s surprised when he opens the door to reveal none other than Stiles Stilinski, with bags under his eyes, an unsure smile and a messy bedhead.

“I’m back,” Stiles says, making a little ta-da gesture, before he winces at himself and slumps his shoulders.

There’s a lot of responses Derek could have to that. There’s a lot of ways he should be _allowed_  to react to that, and most of them include being in the very least passive agressive. In the _very least_ , he should throw the door shut in Stiles’ face.

“Come in,” is what he says instead.

It’s been almost a year since he last saw Stiles. 

A year since he dropped him off at the airport, held his hand in both of his, heart in his eyes and asked Stiles to call, if he’d like, to not forget about him while he was off at college.

A year since he kissed Stiles on the forehead, achingly sweet and lingering, the climax of an entire summer of almost there touches, almost there love, almost there confessions; an entire summer of _almosts_.

Stiles jerks into the house like he’s afraid Derek might take his invitation back, and sits on the couch, hands curling around his loose khakis. He looks a bit expectantly at Derek.

Derek sits down in the armchair in front of him, waits while Stiles tries to find his words.

“So,” Stiles starts, his hands spasm on his legs before he clenches them again into fists. “I fucked up.”

“Stiles-”

“No, I did. I _did_  fuck up. I- I know you probably don’t want to hear why I was such a dickhead, I know you probably hate me and-”

“I couldn’t,” Derek interrupts. “I couldn’t hate you. Stiles, it’s okay, you didn’t want to- and I- I understand.”

Stiles gets up agitate, kneels on the floor in front of him, hands grabbing Derek’s in a parady of the last time they touched.

“No, you don’t- you _don’t_. Derek it’s not that I didn’t want to, it’s that I was stupid and I got scared. As soon as I got on that plane I started missing you and then it hit me that you’re _it_  and that’s terrifying.

“The thought that I could settle down with you at twenty-one is _terrifying_ , Derek. You’re- you mean so much, so _much_  that I got scared of telling you, of being too much too soon, that one of us wouldn’t make it after another supernatural encounter and I know how much it would cost you if I died, and how much it’d cost me if you-”

Stiles looks down and Derek squeezes his hand in his, makes him look back up.

“Stiles, why are you here?” Derek asks, trying to keep his voice even. He doesn’t want to hope, doesn’t dare to-

“To say I’m sorry, for not calling and for being a coward and that- that I’m not afraid anymore and if you wanted to give it a try…”

Derek lets out a slow steadying breath that he has been holding since Stiles got on that plane.

“Okay.”

“Okay?” Stiles asks, sounding horribly hopeful.

“Okay. Let’s give us a try,” Derek says and the smile Stiles gives him is almost worth the year of radio silence and heartache.

Stiles reaches up, places his lips on Derek’s forehead as achingly and lovingly as Derek had done.

“Let’s give us a try.”


	19. "can u stop making jokes about how we'll never date it's starting to really hurt me" au, happy bg back, getting together

“That’s as unlikely as cows flying, Scott,” Stiles says with an eyeroll. “As unlikely a bisexual character saying the word _bisexual_ , as unlikely as the republican party passing a motion for gun control, as unlikely as me and Derek going on a date,” he continues, trying to keep the bitterness off his voice at the last one.

The room is silence for a moment and Stiles looks up from his phone to see everyone glaring at him.

“What?”

“Excuse me,” Derek mutters and pushes off his chair, slamming the back door on his way out.

“ _Dude_ ,” Scott says, giving him miserable puppy eyes. “That was mean.”

“What,” he says, again frowning at them.

Erica slams a pillow on his face. _Hard_.

“Ow, what the fuck.”

“You’re a shithead, Stilinski. _Fine_ , we get it, you don’t want to date Derek, you’re saving yourself or whatever the fuck, but _stop throwing it in his face_.”

“Throwing _what_  in his face? And what do you mean _I_  don’t want to date Derek. _Derek_  doesn’t want to date me and that’s _fine_ , whatever, I get it, okay. I’m _dealing_  and trying not to make it weird.”

“You’re literally the stupidest person I’ve met in my entire life,” Isaac tells him.

“What the-”

“Derek _likes you,”_ Lydia says, looking at him patronizingly. “And you keep making jokes about how you two could never be together.”

“I- what.”

Shit. _Shit_.

“There it is,” Isaac says with an eyeroll.

“I’m an asshole,” he mutters, rubbing his hands over his face.

The choruse of _yes_  that meets that sentence really isn’t warranted.

Stiles winces. “I should go talk to him.”

He gets up from his seat and follows Derek out, feeling like he oughta punch himself in the face when he catches sight of him sitting on the porch steps, shoulders hunched like he’s gearing up for the next blow.

Stiles sits down next to him.

“So I’m an asshole,” he starts.

“It’s fine,” Derek says, looking down at his shoes.

“It’s not though, I didn’t mean to hurt you. I just- I was trying to deal with the fact that you’d never in a million years want to date me, and my way with dealing is making a joke out of it, I guess.”

Derek looks over at him, brows furrowed.

“I’m sorry, I just- _assumed,_  I guess. You’re you and I’m just kinda-”

“Amazing,” Derek says and then blushes, looks back down at his shoes.

Stiles rubs the back of his neck and pretends his cheeks don’t feel a lot warmer than they did just two seconds ago.

“You’re pretty amazing too,” he says, awkwardly. “Extraordinary, even.”

Derek sneaks a peek at him.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” he says and has to swallow around the lump in his throat before he says, “and if you- maybe wanted to go, like, on a _date,_ or something- I- I would really like that.”

Derek turns totally towards him and the way his expression softens and he smiles with his eyes at Stiles makes Stiles want to do something stupid, like go steal Derek’s favorite painting or writing his name on every building in Beacon Hills or kissing him stupid.

“I’d like that,” Derek says quietly.

Stiles can’t really stop the beam that breaks on his face.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Derek breathes out and then leans forward so carefully, something in Stiles aches for him, makes him rush forward to kiss him, slow and sweet and chaste and everything Derek deserves.


	20. fake dating, werewolve conventions, happy bg pack, emissary!stiles, getting together, bamf!stiles

There’s a lot Stiles should take into account before he does this: the fact that he’s a weak little human surrounded by several alphas, the fact that Scott is shaking his head vehemently  looking mildly panicked, the fact that this could ruin a lot of treaties with a lot of people, the fact that he’s not even _really_ dating Derek, the fact that he shouldn’t sully the name of the Hale pack so early in their efforts to restore it.

Stiles _knows_ he shouldn’t do this, but Stiles also isn’t famous for having any kind of survival instincts or keeping his mouth shut in high stress situations, so.

“What did you say about my alpha?” he spits, getting up so fast that his chair topples back with and smacks loudly on the floor in the suddenly quiet room.

The alpha in question smirks like the complete douchebag he is.

“I said he was a _weak little bitch_ who is stupid enough to pick the runts of the littler as his betas.”

“Stiles, don’t,” Scott whispers.

Erica is grinding her teeth next to him and stands up a second after he does, a low growl coming from her throat.

“ _And_ ,” the big douchebag continues, “you’re his useless, weak little fuckhole.”

Stiles is overcome with the kind of serene anger that once let him take down an entire coven of witches without batting an eye.

“You know what?” he says, sugary sweet as he goes around the table, shaking his sleeve and calling to his magic until his bat drops down. “You’re right. I’m his little fuckhole, his _bitch_ if you want to, and you know what?”

The alpha is smirking, clearly not seeing Stiles as a threat.

He throws a glance at the table just to make sure Erica is getting with the program, and indeed she is, advancing behind him and keeping at the edges of the circle that has formed around them, making sure no one interrupts Stiles’ little show.

“I bend over when he asks me to,” he says and takes the baseball bat to the alpha’s stomach, just a tad too fast to be human, and the alpha bends over with the force of the impact of the mountain ash. “I go on my knees when he asks to.” All it takes is a pulse of electricity as Stiles slaps on the back of the alpha’s neck to get him on his knees. “I roll over when he asks to.” Another blow with the bat to the alpha’s back makes him go down hard. “And I beg when he asks to,” Stiles say, sweet as you please, pressing his foot down on the alpha’s throat, the wolfsbane blade he has strapped on his uncle glinting and keeping the alpha in place.

Sudden movement in the corner of his eye catches his attention and he turns just in time to see Erica take down one of the alpha’s betas.

Atta girl.

She steps on them, mimicking Stiles’ moves and smirks, throwing her hair over her shoulder.

“Who’s the little bitch now?”

Stiles allows himself to smirk down at the alpha, tasting victory in the back of his throat.

“What the hell is going on here?” Derek’s voice snaps through the air like a whip and makes both Erica and Stiles wince.

Stiles looks up apologetically, and Erica slinks off the beta and back to where the rest of the pack stood to watch.

“He was trash talking you,” Stiles explains, gesturing vaguely for the alpha gasping for breath under his foot.

Derek pinches the bridge of his nose.

“Stiles, would you please stop humiliating one of the most influential alphas from California and come back here.”

Stiles huffs and steps over the man’s body, putting all his weight on his throat for a second before he strides towards Derek, who immediately grabs him by the back of his neck and shakes him.

“Stop doing stupid shit like this for me.”

Stiles wouldn’t say that he pouts, except for the fact that he _might_ pout a little bit.

“You weren’t here to defend yourself, it’s my job to do it when you can’t.”

Derek gives him another shake and Stiles really oughta be worried with the fact that he has his back to the alpha he just humiliated in the middle of the Californian Werewolf Convention, but Derek’s got him and he trusts Derek to keep him safe.

“I’ll deal with you later, go sit down.”

“Can’t wait,” Stiles smirks and goes to take his seat while Derek faces down the alpha with something akin to patronizing pity.

«»

Here’s the thing: Stiles didn’t really expect for Derek to deal with him later. He’d expected for Derek to let it go this once, just because of how utterly _awesome_ that had been, but boy oh boy had Stiles been wrong.

“… _reckless_ and immature, and honestly, did you even stop to think about the consequences? You could’ve been seriously _hurt_ , Stiles!” Derek finishes exploding, glaring Stiles down.

“Look, I couldn’t let some random alpha tear you down, _our pack_ , just because I could’ve gotten hurt.”

“ _Yes_ , you could, that’s _exactly_ what you should’ve done!” Derek seems close to pulling out his hair. “If I knew this is what you would do when Erica came up with the brilliant idea of pretending to be mates, I wouldn’t have said yes to it.”

Stiles grits his teeth. “No need to throw in my face that I’d be a terrible mate, I know you don’t-“

“That’s _not_ what I said. Don’t put words in my mouth. You could’ve gotten hurt, Stiles!”

“So what?”

“So what the hell would I do without you?!” Derek bursts and then goes very, very still.

Stiles goes still too, his mind grinding to a stop as the words register.

“I mean,” Derek tries to backtrack. “You’re pack, and I care about you and-“

“No,” Stiles cuts him off. “No, you don’t get to-“ He shakes his head. “What would you do without me? Seriously, Derek, you don’t- you don’t really need me, you can do this by yourself, you can-“

Derek huffs and strides towards him, pokes him in the chest. “Maybe I don’t _want_ to do this without you, maybe I would be lost without you, _maybe_ I could’ve killed that alpha where he stood if he had hurt you in any way, and caused a scandal. Did you think about of _that_?”

Stiles drops his mouth open and doesn’t dare to hope, because _maybe_ Derek likes him.

“It would’ve been fair. You were defending your mate, right?”

Derek’s shoulders hunch and he takes a step back; Stiles takes a step forward, chasing him.

“It’s pretend, you don’t want to-“

“ _Maybe_ I do. Maybe I’ve wanted it to be real for a long time and was waiting for you to make the first move. Have _you_ thought about that?” Stiles punctuates his sentence by poking Derek on the chest, a mockery of his earlier actions.

“I-“ Derek breathes out, his face morphing into an heartbreaking mask of hope. “Really? You want to-“

“-date the hell out of you. Yes, I really _really_ want to.”

Derek blushes, high on his ears and spreading down to his cheekbones.

“Oh,” he breathes out, soft as a sigh.

“Yeah,” Stiles grins and sways a little closer. “And _maybe_ if you kissed me right now, I would _really_ , really like that.”

The smile on Derek’s face is enough to make an endangered species suddenly boom back to life.

Derek moves forward, closing the little space that was between them and brings his hand up to frame the side of Stiles’ neck, thumbing his bottom lip playfully before he leans forward and touches their lips together.

The kiss is the culmination of years of waiting and build up, it’s desperate and messy and sweet and life affirming all at once.

When Derek pulls back he pulls Stiles’ breath along with him, leaving Stiles panting for air, swallowing greedy gulps of it.

“Okay,” he sighs out, “maybe we should do that again, just, you know, to really seal the deal, make sure that we really-“

Derek cuts him off with another kiss and Stiles smiles into this one.

Kicking that alpha’s ass was the best idea he’s had in a while.


	21. hs au, pining!derek, kittens, derek hale gets arrested for being too good for this world, "i just arrested u and im on the phone with my kid and they want to know if ur cute" au

His mom is going to _kill him_.

“Are you comfortable back there, son?” Sheriff Stilinski asks.

Derek swallows compulsively and manages a shaky, “Yeah.”

Forget killing him, his mother is going to make him watch the toddlers during every full moon for the _rest of his life_.

Derek turns his wrists to feel the give of the cuffs, wondering just in how much trouble he would get if he broke them and jumped out the window.

Here’s the thing: Derek Hale considers himself a _good kid_ , and he knows a handful of teachers, family members and older folks in the Beacon Hills community that would agree that he is, in fact, a _good kid_.

He always tries his best at school, has a decent GPA; always tries to make his mom proud by never getting into trouble like his siblings are prone to; he always tries to help everywhere he can, he’s lost count of how many yards he mowed for only a piece of candy and a pat on the cheek, how many random kid’s shoelaces he tied, how many people he helped cart groceries around, how many tiny animals he rescued from trees.

All in all, Derek Hale is a _good kid_.

Or he thought he was until today.

Because today Derek is riding in the back of the Sheriff’s cruiser with his wrists in handcuffs.

The Sheriff’s phone goes off.

“Excuse me,” the Sheriff says, pulling the car to the side of the road and answering it. “Stiles I’m at work, what do you-“ there’s a pause. “Yes, I know I’m late for- I’m just taking a seventeen year old to the station, I’ll be home in a- what?”

The Sheriff twists to look at Derek. “My son is asking if you’re cute.”

Derek can feel his face flame up. “I’d like to think so, sir.”

The Sheriff starts laughing. “He likes to think so, kid,” he says to the phone. “Wait- no, Stiles, _don’t_ -“ he pulls the phone from his face and looks at it with a frown.

Derek watches through the grid as the Sheriff throws his phone on the passenger seat.

“I apologize in advance for my son,” the Sheriff says and oh no.

_Oh, no._

“Stiles is going to be there?”

“’fraid so. Is that going to be a problem, son?”

“No,” Derek chokes out. “No problem, sir.”

After all why would there be a problem in Derek’s crush of two years seeing Derek get brought into the station by his own _father_ for what is possibly the lamest reason ever? There’s no problem in that, honestly.

Derek thunks his head back against the seat and tries not to groan.

It’s bad enough that Stiles doesn’t give him the time of day, it’s bad enough that Stiles sneers at jocks and piles Derek along with them, always thinks Derek is messing with him when he stutters his way through trying to ask Stiles out.

Derek thunks his head back against the seat again for good measure, trying to figure a way out of this mess, but before he can, the cruiser comes to a stop in front of the station just as Derek sees the Jeep come down the street.

This is it. This is how Derek Hale blows his chances to ever date Stiles.

The Sheriff opens the back door and helps him get out, leading him into the station with a firm hand wrapped around his arm.

“Look, kid, you don’t have to be this nervous. It’s your first misdemeanor and you’re still underage, you’re leaving with a slap on the wrist.”

“Right.” Derek swallows as the Sheriff sits him down on a bench outside his office.

“Now we just need to wait for your mom and you can-“

“Yo, Daddy-o,” Stiles’ voice calls out and Derek winces, sliding down the bench and trying to make himself as small as he can because _maybe_ , just maybe Stiles won’t see him and this won’t be a- “Is that Derek Hale?”

Well, _fuck_.

“You know him?”

“Yeah, we share some classes,” Stiles says casually, looking down at Derek with a smirk. “So what is he in for? Joy riding in his sweet Camaro? Skinny dipping in the park’s lake?”

Derek’s eyebrows climb up his forehead and the Sheriff turns to him with a frown.

“I swear I never did any of those, you can ask my mom, I’m always home on time!”

The Sheriff turns his raised eyebrow to Stiles.

“He’s in for trespassing. I found him in the Whittemore’s backyard.”

“ _Ohmygod_ ,” Stiles breaths out, face contorting in anger, “if you’re helping Jackson cheat on Lydia wi-“

“ _What?! No!”_ His voice goes embarrassingly high pitched and he winces at himself.

Smooth Derek, _smooth_.

“Then why were you in the Whittemore’s backyard,” Stiles asks suspiciously, leaning forward and Derek will _not_ get a boner, he will not, this is not sexy at all and it would be a _really bad time for a boner_.

“I’d like to know that too, son,” the Sheriff says, staring him down.

“I-“ Derek chokes, feeling his cheeks heat up. “Do I have to tell in front of him?” he asks, jerking his head towards Stiles.

Stiles face morphs into a smirk. “Is it embarrassing?”

The Sheriff cuffs him upside the head and Stiles yelps.

“No, you don’t, we can go into an inte-“

A meek meow interrupts the Sheriff and Derek groans, hitting his head against the wall behind him.

“Was that-“ Stiles starts looking around jerkily, trying to find the sound.

The kitten meows sadly again before it starts wailing and both Stilinskis focus on the general area of Derek’s chest.

“Son, are you meowing?” the Sheriff asks, clearly trying not to laugh.

Derek slides down the bench, which jolts the kitten in the inner pocket of his jacket and the poor little thing meows loudly again.

“There was a cat stuck on the tree,” he mutters, feeling the blush heat up his cheeks and down his neck.

“ _Ohmygod_ ,” Stiles coos and this is horrible, this is the worst thing that ever happened to him and he once broke his leg in three places falling down a tree.

“Let me get this straight, you trespassed into the Whittemore’s backyard because there was a kitten stuck on the tree.”

“Yes,” Derek mumbles and wishes for a hole to climb into when the Sheriff starts chuckling.

“Can I?” Stiles says, bouncing in place like a five year old and Derek is so gone on this boy that he just nods his head and lets Stiles open up his jacket and scoop up the kitten, holding it in his palms and cooing at it.

Derek looks up at him and feels something warm and fuzzy unfurl in his chest.

“Oh Christ,” the Sheriff says, making Derek jerk his gaze back to him and then blush violently. “Come here, kid, let me take those cuffs off of you.”

Derek turns and lets the Sheriff do it, rubbing his wrists a little, more for appearances than anything.

“Where’s my son?” his mother’s steely voice cuts through the station and Derek’s head immediately snaps to her, watching his mom walk towards him like she’s on a hell path.

_Oh no_.

“Derek, baby, are you okay?”

“I’m fine, mom,” he mutters, helpless to do anything but let her cradle his cheeks and turn his face, looking for damage. “Mom, really I’m fine.”

The Sheriff clears his throat. “Ms. Hale, there’s nothing to worry about. No charges are being pressed and this isn’t going on his permanent record.”

His mother glares the Sheriff down, every bit the alpha that she is. The Sheriff holds her gaze steadily.

“I still want to know why you felt the need to drag my son in here like a criminal, Sheriff Stilinski.”

The Sheriff nods once curtly, and steps back gesturing towards his office. “Why don’t we continue this conversation inside?”

Talia holds his gaze before she accepts the open invitation and enters the Sheriff’s office.

Derek looks after her, hoping she doesn’t go too hard on him.

“So,” Stiles says, plopping down on the seat next to him. “Derek Hale, captain of the basketball team and co-captain of the swim team, climbs trees to rescue tiny kittens and is a helpless momma’s boy.” Stiles grins at him but there’s something different from the other grins he’s given Derek so far. It’s softer, a little more open.

Derek can’t help but smile back.

“You’re kinda cute, Hale.”

“You’re really cute,” Derek blurts out and then winces.

Nice going, Derek, _smooth as hell_.

Stiles smiles at him, something that crinkles his eyes and feels _real_. “Yeah?” he breathes out.

“Yeah,” Derek says.

«»

Derek is in heaven, his soul has ascended and all he needed was Stiles Stilinski pressed up against him just so and kissing him like it’s going out of style, mindful of the kitten that fell back asleep in Derek’s pocket.

Someone clears their throat loudly and Stiles flails so hard he almost falls out of Derek’s lap and he would have if it weren’t for Derek’s hand on his back.

“Hi, Dad,” Stiles squeaks out.

“Son,” the Sheriff says slowly, “would you mind getting off of Derek.”

“Sure, Dad,” Stiles says and gets up, coughing awkwardly.

Derek does his best impersonation of a statue.

“And Derek.”

“Sir?”

“I expect you for dinner on Friday.”

Derek swallows. “Yes, sir.”

“And I expect to see _you_ at lunch on Sunday, Stiles,” his mother says, and it’s Stiles’ turn to squeak out a _yes_. His mother smiles serenely. “Good. Sheriff Stilinski, it was a pleasure to meet you, I have a feeling we’ll be seeing a lot of each other in the future.”

«»

Derek keeps both the kitten and Stiles, and gets laughed at by Laura for the rest of his life, but it’s alright because he’s got Stiles and that’s enough to get him through anything.


	22. hs au, "our schools have a really big rivalry going on and we're secretely dating" au, secret dating, established

Derek flips through his index cards nervously, making sure he’s not missing one.

Today is the debate final between Beacon Hills Public High School and Beacon Hills Preparatory High School and he might be a little… _anxious_. Whoever wins this, not only wins an award and bragging rights, but will pass with a perfect grade in their AP History class, granted they didn’t have anything lower than an A on their tests.

Today Derek is going up against Lydia Martin, which in and on itself is terrifying, and he’s doing it in front of a full auditorium of students and parents because _of course_ his parents made it a question to be present and record the whole thing.

Someone touches him on the shoulder and he jumps, swiveling around.

“What are you doing here?” Derek asks and Stiles grins at him.

“Managed to sneak away from Lydia and came to wish my favorite boyfriend good luck.”

“I’m your only boyfriend,” Derek tells him and smiles when Stiles leans forward and takes his hand, squeezes it reassuringly.

“Wouldn’t need anyone else,” Stiles winks.

“Smooth, Stilinski.”

“Damn, right,” Stiles says and leans forward for a kiss, which Derek grants him happily.

“Derek!” someone calls and they both wince.

“One more for good luck,” Stiles says and sneaks another kiss before he dashes away, leaving Derek smiling stupidly at him.

“What was Stilinski doing here?” Erica asks suspiciously.

“Trash talking,” he lies with a shrug. “Don’t worry I told him to go fuck himself.”

Erica raises an eyebrow. “Uh-huh.”

«»

“You don’t even _like_ Lacrosse,” Isaac bitches, shoving his nose in his scarf and huddling up against the cool night air.

“Boyd’s on the team,” Derek argues. “And Erica has been asking me to come for ages, so I decided why not.”

“I hate Lacrosse,” Isaac mutters, kicking the grass.

“Then why did you follow me out of the house, idiot?”

“Couldn’t let you wander into enemy territory on your own.”

Derek rolls his eyes. “It’s just a _high school_ , not a war zone.”

“Say that to Brett. That kid, Liam, shaved off his eyebrows in his sleep. Or your little sister Cora, when Lydia filled her backpack with glitter.”

Derek snorts. That had been kind of funny.

“Brett put green dye on Liam’s shampoo in the locker rooms, and Cora stole all of Lydia’s lingerie during that house party and threw it in the electricity wires.”

“Semantics,” Isaac says, waving his hand just as Derek catches Stiles coming towards him from the corner of his eye.

“Why don’t you go drag Erica away from Boyd while I get us seats?”

Isaac makes a face. “Sure, but only because you’re my ride home and I know you caught them having sex last week.”

Derek shudders. There’s something inherently wrong about catching the girl you consider a sister screwing the guy you consider a brother.

Isaac disappears between the people still milling around in the field, heading towards the locker room, just as Stiles passes by him, grabbing Derek’s hand and dragging him behind the bleachers.

“You came!” he says, a grin so wide and genuinely happy that it crinkles his eyes and makes Derek’s heart summersault in his chest.

“Couldn’t let you get on the field without a good luck kiss, after all it helped _me_ in the debate.”

“Is that so?” Stiles asks, sneaking his arms around Derek’s shoulders and pressing his smile against Stiles lips.

Here, they can kiss a little more freely than they could in the backstage of the auditorium, and Derek reveals in it, making it deep and slow, and taking advantage of the moment to sneak his hand down Stiles’ lacrosse shorts and snapping the band on his jockstrap.

Stiles yelps and pulls back with a laugh, lightly punching Derek in the shoulder.

“Asshole.”

“Hm, you love it,” Derek says confidently and smiles at his boyfriend, feeling warmth pool up in his stomach at how much he loves this idiot.

“Yeah, I do.”

“Derek, where are-“

They jerk apart when the new voice cuts through the quiet bubble they had made for themselves.

“What the hell are you doing back here with this knucklehead?”

Derek shoves Stiles on the shoulder, squeezing it for the barest fraction of a second and then letting go.

“Nothing.”

“Aw, don’t be like that Hale,” Stiles calls after him. “I know you want this!”

“Fuck off, Stilinski,” he throws over his shoulder, and pushes Isaac towards the direction of the actual bleachers.

Stiles grins and flips him off, but it’s okay because he scores two goals and after each one his gaze immediately finds Derek’s in a crowd, excited to show Derek what he did for him.


	23. babysitter!derek, future fic, kid fic

There’s not a lot of things in life Stiles has never considered.

Even when Scott got turned into a werewolf he can’t say the idea had never occurred to him, but then again which teenager doesn’t have the passing thought of his best friend becoming a creature of the night and leaving him in the dust.

But that’s not his _point_. His point is that, despite having all kinds of different scenarios running through his head at all hours of the day, it had never occurred to him that _this_ would be within the realm of possibilities.

“I told you I’d be busy,” says Derek Hale, opening the door of his new respectable house on a respectable neighborhood as he lightly bounces a small child on his hip like this is his Sunday routine.

“Baby!” Stiles meeps.

A tiny adorable face immediately scrunches up at him. “I’m three!” the little girl says shoving three fingers in Stiles’ face and almost poking him in the eye.

Derek reaches out and curls his hand around her tinier one, unwittingly causing Stiles to die a little bit inside.

“Mia, this is Stiles. He’s my friend.”

“Ew.”

Derek’s lips twitch in an obvious suppressed smile.

“Stiles, this is Mia, she lives next door.”

“Hi, Mia,” he tries, and she pointedly turns her face away from him.

Derek smirks at him. “Her parents had to go out, so I’m watching her for a bit. I was just about to make lunch, do you want to come in?”

Stiles opens his mouth to answer but is immediately interrupted by Mia’s screeched “ _No!”_

Derek turns to frown down at her.

“Mia,” he says sternly in a way that makes Stiles think about tantrums at the grocery store that can only be dissuaded with the promise of sweets and Derek’s calm demeanor and strong steady hand as he raises his own kid up.

He’s not proud to say that the thought causes longing in the pit of his stomach.

“But you’re supposed to play with me!”

“I could make lunch,” Stiles offers, “so you can play with Derek more.”

Mia looks at him through squinted eyes before giving him a serious nod.

“Okay, but you can’t steal my Derek.”

Stiles crosses his heart with one finger. “Promise I won’t.”

Derek is eyeing him amusedly, but doesn’t say anything when Stiles takes half a step forward to enter his house, just steps aside and leaves the doorway wide open for him to waltz in.

He also never predicted he would find himself jealous of a three year old while desperately needing her approval, but here he is.

Somehow it seems _imperative_ that Mia likes him, and yes he will completely ignored the part of him that knows the only reason he wants Mia to like him is to prove himself to Derek, to prove that he could be good with kids, _just in case_.

“House is looking nice,” Stiles remarks as he makes his way to the kitchen.

“Thanks,” Derek says, turning towards the living room with Mia, and Stiles makes the grave mistake of peeking in there.

If you had told Stiles Stilinski two years ago that he would get the weirdest domestic boner over Derek Hale having built a fort in his living room for a little girl he would laugh in your face, but this is the harsh reality, and this is where Stiles finds himself: with a weird boner because _Derek Hale built a blanket fort_ that takes up most of his living room for a little girl he’s casually babysitting _. There are fairy lights, what the hell!_

Stiles silently makes his way to the kitchen and tells himself to calm down, because losing his chill like this over Derek with kids is going to ruin all his nonexistent street cred.

«»

Stiles makes mac and cheese for lunch and cuts the hotdogs like tiny octopuses and no it’s not bribing, it’s just gentle incentive for Mia to like him.

“Lunch’s ready,” he calls out, poking his head into the living room, which proves to be a terrible idea because Derek has Mia on his lap and The Jungle Book is playing on TV as he quietly sings along to Bear Necessities and makes her little arms flop around as she giggles.

Once upon a time, Stiles was worried about dying a lame death, like being thrown across the air by some supernatural entity and knocking his head too hard on something. Now he knows for sure that today is going to be the day he dies, and the cause of his death will be Derek Hale singing Disney songs and looking like a hundred pounds of guilt and sorrow were just lifted off his shoulders.

Derek pauses the movie and puts Mia on the floor, taking the hand she offers and guiding her to the dining room.

Mia tugs Derek by the sleeve and loudly whispers, “What if he put bad stuff in the food and we _die_?”

Stiles grasps his shirt in mock offense. “I wouldn’t do that! Besides if I did, Derek could sniff it out with his superhero nose.”

Mia stops dead in her tracks and gasps. “I knew it! I knew he was a superhero! He said he wasn’t but I knew it!”

Derek glares at Stiles. “I’m not a superhero, Mia. Stiles is just joking.”

Stiles crouches down to her level, puts his hand on the side of his mouth and whispers conspiratorially, “He _has_ to say that so his superhero identity remains hidden. It’s in the superhero’s rule book.”

Mia squints at him suspiciously. “How do you know then, if he can’t tell anyone?”

“I help him beat up bad guys.”

“You do?”

He nods.

“ _Stiles!_ ” Derek huffs, aggravated, but it’s too late.

Mia’s eyes are as wide as they’ll open and she’s let go of Derek’s hand to run to Stiles and crouch down in front of him. “Can you tell me stories about Derek saving people?”

Stiles grins, “I can tell you _all_ the stories.”

And that’s how Stiles finds himself telling Mia about the time Derek punched through a wall like Superman to save all his friends from the bad guys, and how his friends were under mind control and tried to attack the people in the city but Derek valiantly saved them.

Somewhere along the story – completed with Stiles making villain-y voices and high pitched _ohno save us Derek_ – Mia migrated to Derek’s lap and starts sending him increasingly awed looks as Derek tries to get her to eat her food.

“And then they lived happily ever after,” Stiles concludes, just as Mia chomps down on the last spoonful of mac and cheese. “ _And_ if you think I’m lying you can ask Erica and Boyd and Cora when they come to visit.”

“Whoa! Are they superheros too?”

“They’re superheros in training,” Stiles confides.

“Is Derek the best superhero of them all?”

Stiles sneaks a look at Derek and his red ears and his awkward stance like he doesn’t know what to do with himself when put on a pedestal like this.

“Derek is the _best person ever_ ,” Stiles says confidently.

“ _Whoa_ ,” Mia breathes out and turns until she is facing Derek. “You’re my favoritest superhero. Better than Batman! Or Elsa!”

“I don’t know, Elsa is pretty cool,” Derek says clumsily.

Mia shakes her head. “But you’re _coolier_ because you’re really real! And you saved my kitty from that really high tree and got my Winnie the Pooh ball from the roof when those meanie boys threw it and you’re _the best superhero!_ ”

“Okay,” Derek chokes out and Stiles feels like patting himself on the back for making him admit he’s good at least once in his goddamned life. “How about we go to the park to feed the ducks like I promised?”

“Duckies!” Mia screeches and scrambles down from Derek’s lap, running off, “I’m gonna get my coat for the duckies!”

“You didn’t have to do that,” Derek says, pushing himself off the table and gathering the plates.

“What? Reveal your secret identity?”

Derek stares him down and there’s something inherently vulnerable about a man holding a pile of dirty dishes, wearing Looney Tunes socks and a soft sweater, as they stand in their kitchen, looking like their world was tipped over and everything is slightly askew.

“I’m not a hero.”

Stiles shrugs like what Derek thinks he is and isn’t doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things, and starts picking up his plates.

“No hero thinks they’re a hero or they wouldn’t be a hero, capisce?”

“ _Stiles_ -“

“Take the compliment, Derek, we have duckies to feed.”

Derek huffs and aggressively washes his dishes as Mia runs around the table singing the duckies song that she made up on the spot.

«»

On their way to the park Mia gives the bag of corn she had been holding to Derek and stretches her arm up until she can wrap her fingers around Stiles’, and Stiles has a full minute to feel warm and victorious, before she drops all of her weight and uses them as a swing, leaping over sidewalks and giggling madly.

They sit down near the lake and Derek methodically picks out just the right amount of corn kernels for Mia to throw in, telling her the ugly duckling story with a spin wherein the ugly duckling just found better friends who weren’t dickheads and superficial.

They sit there, with Derek watching Mia carefully, having a mild heart attack when she runs off to throw a piece of corn that didn’t quite make it into the lake, before she runs back and sprawls on Derek; and Stiles watching Derek and how lighter he seems, how beautiful he is smiling fondly down at a kid.

After feeding the ducks the wander to the empty playground and Mia beelines towards the swings, trying to climb into one before Derek gets there and helps her sit down properly.

“Sit,” she orders, pointing to the swing beside her. “Stiles can push, right, Stiles?”

“Right,” he says easily and pushes her on the swings as high as he dares before Derek starts looking anxious.

They stay there for a while as the sun starts climbing down in the horizon and the only noise around them is the squeaking of the swings and Mia’s laughter.

“Do you want kids?” Stiles finally bursts.

“I- yeah. I think I do,” Derek says softly, like he’s afraid of the words.

“You’ll make a good dad one day,” Stiles tells him honestly.

“You think?”

“Yeah.”

They’re quiet for another beat before Derek asks, “Do _you_ want kids?”

“I’d like some, they’re pretty fun,” Stiles says easily, sneaking a glance at where Derek is softly pushing himself back and forward on the swing, hands fisted tight around the chains.

“Good,” Derek says, and it feels a lot like the start of something.


	24. wolf!derek, feral!derek, "you need to stop leaving dead bodies in my kitchen" au

“This has to stop,” Stiles says, looking down at his blood soaked feet in disgust and then back up at Derek who is stubbornly trying to drag a deer into his house, even though it’s clear that the thing can’t fit through Stiles’ back door.

“Derek,” Stiles snaps and Derek immediately jumps to attention, dropping the deer and trotting back to him as he licks his muzzle. “Can you _please_ stop leaving dead bodies in my kitchen?”

Derek gently headbutts him in the thigh and sits back, panting his happy wolf pant and wagging his tail.

Stiles’ whole resolve crumbles and he buries his fingers in the soft fur between Derek’s ears.

“Listen, I know it’s hard being stuck like that, and that you want to provide for me or whatever, but you’re not an actual wolf, and this type of behavior is _very_ frowned upon. Normal people don’t give their boyfriends huge carcasses of meat, normal people give their boyfriends flowers.”

Derek whines softly and jumps up, setting his huge paws on Stiles’ chest and licking his face in apology.

“Yeah, I know you’re not normal people, _but still_. No more dead animals okay?”

Derek grumbles and licks his cheek.

“Okay. Now come on, you _really_ need a shower.”

«»

“You know, this isn’t what I meant when I said normal people give their boyfriends flowers,” Stiles remarks.

Derek drops another bouquet of mauled flowers on his kitchen floor and trots right back out the door, seemingly dead-set on giving Stiles every single flower he can get his maw on.

“You’re cleaning this up,” his dad tells him, stepping over the mangled flowers and pouring himself a cup of coffee.

Stiles throws his hands up.

«»

“Isn’t it weird though?”

“It’s still Derek,” Stiles tells him, burying his fingers in the soft fur behind Derek’s ears and scratching.

“Yeah, but, like- he acts a lot like a dog,” Scott says, frowning down at them.

Derek lifts his head from where it had been tucked in Stiles’ neck and turns to growl softly at Scott.

“Like I said, it’s still Derek. And it’s just until the curse lifts, then he’ll be his usual grumpy, frowny self.”

Derek grumbles and tucks his snout back into Stiles’ neck, snuffling sadly.

Stiles loops his arms around him in a hug, wishing this goddamned curse lifted sooner than later. He knows that right now, Derek’s brain has been simplified to the one of a wolf, he knows that that witch pulled his animalistic side up in hopes Derek would go berserk and murder them all, and he knows Derek hates it like this, knows that he can somehow grasp that there’s something missing in him and it makes him upset.

So Stiles hugs him and kisses him between the eyes and waits it out like Deaton told them to.

«»

“He bites,” Stiles informs the fifth person that tries to reach for Derek without asking on their daily stroll through the park.

The guy immediately takes his hand back and eyes Derek warily. “Shouldn’t he be leashed then?”

“He just doesn’t like being touched, and I don’t let him out of my sight, don’t worry about it,” he says dismissively, walking away from the guy.

“Doggy,” a child squees, running in their direction and Stiles opens his mouth to warn them off but Derek paws at his leg and grumbles.

Stiles snaps his mouth shut and watches in something akin to awe as the kid gets their hands on Derek’s fur and carefully pets him.

“Hi, doggy! Hi, hi, pretty doggy,” they coo as Derek passively stands still and lets them pet him, turning his snout to lick the little child’s hand and making them giggle.

Stiles can’t help the fond smile that takes over his features, wondering if Derek will do the same thing with their kids when the time comes.

A harried parent hurries their way and Stiles smiles, makes sure to be friendly and open and unthreatening.

They end up hanging out together for an hour or so, Stiles learning what it’s like to have kids from someone who went through it first-hand so recently, and Derek playfully chasing the teeny booper around the park, falling on the floor at the lightest shove and rolling around the grass.

He’s going to need another shower when they get home, but Stiles can’t really be bothered to care.

«»

“Dad!” Stiles calls out. “Did you do the laundry? I can’t find my clothes anywhere.”

“Have you checked in the closet at the end of the hall?”

“In the-“

Stiles frowns, walking down the hall and not even being that surprised to find Derek sleeping, belly up and contorted into a weird position in a nest of his clothes.

“You’re lucky you’re cute,” Stiles tells him and resigns himself to wear the shirt that’s one size too small to work.

«»

It’s been about two weeks since Derek went feral when Stiles wakes up in the middle of the night with the feeling of being suffocated.

He flails out his arms to try to get whatever it is off of him, and gets a sleepy grumble in return. A much more human sleepy grumble than the ones he’s been getting for the past two weeks.

He pries his eyes open and his whole body melts with the relief of seeing Derek in his human form.

“Hey big guy,” he whispers, burying his fingers in Derek’s hair and petting gently. “You’re kind of crushing me here.”

Derek sleepily squints his eyes open, grumbles and rolls to his side of the bed, grabbing at Stiles and pulling him close, spooning him.

“Not gonna talk about it? Just gonna go back to sleep?”

Derek snuffles against the back of his neck.

“Okay then,” Stiles whispers and wriggles around until he’s comfortable again.

A long minute passes before he feels lips on the nape of his neck and a quiet “Thank you for taking care of me.”

“Don’t mention it,” he says, yawning hugely and grabbing for Derek’s hand, tucking it into his chest and slowly going back to sleep.


	25. introspective fic, bullshitery prose, established, hand holding

Holding Stiles’ hand is simultaneously the simplest thing, and the most complex thing Derek has ever done.

If he had to compare it to anything, he’d say it’s a lot like trying to contain an electric storm within the confines of your palm without getting overwhelmed by it.

Stiles buzzes with energy on his best days, and nowadays – now that they’re away from anything dark and twisted and Beacon Hills – he has a lot of best days; the storm contained in Derek’s palm, trapped in between the spaces of his fingers feeling as warm as sunshine.

(On his worst days he still holds Derek’s hand, but it’s different- muted. More like the soft pitter patter of rain on a window, than that all-consuming, world moving force.)

Derek loves it when they’re going for a walk and Stiles holds his hand, and squeezes in time with the crescendo of his voice when he reaches the climax of his excitement of whatever topic he was pouring over.

He loves that Stiles doesn’t let go, that he outright goes out of his way to weave through crowds with Derek firmly by his side, never more than arm’s reach away.

He loves how Stiles goes off on tangents, how he’ll pull Derek from their original path to chase something that he’s caught out of the corner of his eye.

He loves that sometimes he has to grasp the tips his finger around Stiles’, locked at first knuckle, both of their arms outstretched, a breath away of letting go of each other, but they never do, and the littlest tug brings Stiles back to him.

It makes him feel powerful; it makes him feel hopeful; it makes him feel loved.

And every time Stiles comes back to him in the simplest little way possible, Derek slots their fingers together with new vigor, turns their hands and raises them so he can kiss across Stiles’ knuckles.

Every time he does, Stiles smiles. Lighting and sunlight sweet, and just for him.

Holding Stiles’ hand feels a lot like the giddy expectation in the pit of your stomach, just after you see lightning strike and are waiting for the thunderclap, watching all of it from the safety of home.

**Author's Note:**

> [i am on the tumblrs, if any of y'alls is interest in yuri!!! on ice or haikyuu!! or witnessing the personification of a train wreck](http://crossroadswrite.tumblr.com)


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